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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni pudding made with milk, brown sugar, eggs, and baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the macaroni in the milk until tender.

  2. Sweeten with brown sugar.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and additional milk.

  4. Pour into a pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a Dutch oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 body of the pudding, absorbing milk and becoming tender as it cooks.
Milk
Cooks the macaroni and, with the eggs, forms the soft custard that sets the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavour.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a sliceable custard.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Eggs thicken as they heat, and overbaking makes the custard grainy, weepy and dry. Remove the pudding once the centre barely wobbles so residual heat finishes setting it.

“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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