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Macaroni and Bacon

A simple pasta dish of macaroni cooked with butter, seasoned stock, pepper, salt, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Macaroni and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon or pig's cheek into small pieces.

  2. Wash the macaroni and break it up.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in water with a lump of butter for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

  3. Add seasoned stock and boil until tender but not broken.

Finish and serve

  1. Toss the macaroni with pepper, salt, and chopped bacon.

  2. Serve on a hot dish.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's cheek or bacon
Provides fat and savoury, smoky flavour that seasons the macaroni.
Naples macaroni
Forms the starchy base of the dish, absorbing the stock as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, flavourful coating.
Seasoned stock
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour that the pasta absorbs as it finishes cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni in stock until tender but not broken. Pasta keeps cooking in its own residual heat, and over-boiling makes it soft and split. Stopping when it is just tender keeps a firm bite and an intact shape.

“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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