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Macaroni, Italian Style

A baked macaroni dish with butter, flour, milk, cheese, ham, paprika, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni, Italian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until tender, about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and rinse with 1 quart of water to prevent sticking.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually pour in the milk while stirring, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the grated cheese, season with salt and paprika, and mix in the macaroni.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish and top with grated ham.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the starchy body that the sauce coats and holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture once thickened.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and melts into the sauce for a creamy, binding texture.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the milk while stirring. Adding the milk slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cheese, ham):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cheese, ham. 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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