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English Way of Dressing Macaroni

A macaroni dish dressed with cheese and optional bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

English Way of Dressing Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Combine the macaroni with the boiling milk, broth, or water in a stewpan.

  2. Boil gently until tender, about 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the grated cheese and salt until well mixed.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a dish and sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Cheshire cheese.

  2. Brown lightly in a Dutch oven.

  3. Mix all the cheese into the macaroni and top with bread crumbs.

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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, chewy body.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding richness, savoury flavour and a creamy texture.
Parmesan or cheshire cheese
Adds sharp, salty flavour and helps the top brown when lightly browned.
Milk
Cooks the pasta while forming a creamy liquid that binds with the cheese.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. Gentle boiling cooks the macaroni evenly without breaking the pasta apart or boiling off the liquid that the cheese needs to melt smoothly.

“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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