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Stewed Macaroni

A simple dish of macaroni cooked with milk, butter, cheese, onion, salt, pepper, and a pinch of baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Stewed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into short pieces.

  2. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water for about 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk with the onion and a pinch of baking soda until scalding.

  2. Strain out the onion and drain the macaroni.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the milk, butter, cheese, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add the macaroni and cook for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a deep dish and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, giving it bulk and a chewy bite.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that becomes the creamy sauce.
Cheese
Adds richness and flavor, and melts into the sauce for body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavor.
Baking soda
Raises the milk's pH, which helps the cheese melt more smoothly.

The step that matters

Heat the milk with baking soda until scalding. Scalding milk gently without boiling it over; overheating can make the milk curdle or scorch, and cheese added to hot, overly reduced milk can turn grainy or oily.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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