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Macaroni Sauce

A macaroni dish cooked in milk and water, mixed with white sauce and seasoned, then served over boiled chicken, turkey, or fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and turkey work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Macaroni Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the macaroni into small bits and soak it in equal parts milk and water for 1 hour.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the soaked macaroni gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the macaroni and add it to a nicely seasoned white sauce.

  3. Heat the mixture until hot and pour it over boiled chickens, turkey, or fowl.

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. Chicken + turkeytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Milk + turkeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Sauce + turkeytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + chickentop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 dish, becoming tender through soaking and gentle boiling.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the macaroni during the soak.
White sauce
Coats the macaroni with a creamy, smooth texture and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Boil the soaked macaroni gently for 45 minutes. Gentle heat lets the pasta soften evenly without breaking apart or sticking to the pot. A hard boil can make the pieces ragged and mushy, so keep the water at a low simmer.

“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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