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Sweet Macaroni

A sweet dish of macaroni cooked in milk, sugar, and eggs, served with optional cream and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a pot.

  2. Gently add the macaroni, salt, and lemon or orange rind (or cinnamon).

  3. Simmer until the macaroni is tender.

  4. Add the sugar and boil until the macaroni is soft and swollen.

  5. Drain the macaroni and place it in a hot dish.

Make the custard and serve

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and stir them into the milk over low heat until thickened.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the macaroni and serve immediately.

  3. Alternatively, heat and sweeten cream, pour it over the macaroni, and dust with cinnamon or crushed macaroons.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 dish, becoming tender and soft as it simmers in the milk.
Milk
Cooks the pasta and, with the egg, forms the thickened custard sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the milk into a custard when gently heated, giving the dish a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk so the macaroni absorbs a sweet flavor as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the milk over low heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so high heat or boiling can scramble the eggs into lumps instead of a smooth, thickened custard. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the sauce silky.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, egg, cream. 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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