Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Macaroni with Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the macaroni
Wash the macaroni and simmer it in broth with pounded mace and salt until tender.
Remove the macaroni from the broth and place it in a dish.
Top and brown
Grate cheese over the macaroni, then cover with fine bread crumbs.
Melt butter and pour it over the crumbs.
Place the dish in a Dutch oven to roast the cheese and brown the bread crumbs.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,405 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Mace + breadtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,005 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Macaroni
- Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a tender, starchy base.
- Broth
- Cooks the pasta while adding savory flavor and moisture.
- Cheese
- Melts and binds with the pasta to create a creamy, rich layer.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp top that browns in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat that helps the crumbs brown and enriches the flavor.
The step that matters
Browning the bread crumbs. Butter-coated crumbs brown through the Maillard reaction and dry heat. Too little heat or time leaves them pale and soft, while too much can scorch them before the cheese melts.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, bread, butter):
- Thymefits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, bread, butter. 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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