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Macaroni Au Vin

A macaroni dish cooked with wine, butter, cream, and Parmesan, served over soaked French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni Au Vin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the crust from the hot French roll and crumble it into pieces.

  2. Pour the wine over the crumbled roll and cover it for one hour to absorb the wine.

  3. Boil the macaroni until soft, then drain it on a sieve.

Make the macaroni mixture

  1. Add the butter and enough thick cream to the macaroni.

  2. Stir in grated Parmesan cheese until it resembles a fine custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture hot over the soaked roll.

  2. Brown the top with a salamander or broiler before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Wine + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,004 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

French roll
Its crumb soaks up the wine, forming a soft base that holds the topping.
Wine
Moistens and softens the crumbled roll, adding flavour to the base.
Macaroni
Cooked until soft, it forms the bulk of the creamy top layer.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the macaroni set into a custard-like texture.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps the mixture thicken as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the macaroni mixture.

The step that matters

Brown the top with a salamander or broiler before serving.. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction between proteins and sugars at the surface, which needs direct high heat. Watch closely, because the top can scorch quickly after it starts to colour.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, butter, cream, parmesan cheese):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, butter, cream, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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