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Meat and Macaroni

A casserole of macaroni with sliced meat, onion, butter, flour, ketchup, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling water until tender, then cut into short lengths and keep hot.

  2. Remove jelly or gristle from the meat, and place it with any bones or trimmings in a saucepan with 1 ½ cups cold water.

  3. Simmer for at least 1 hour.

  4. Cut the meat into small slices and the onion into dice.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the onion, and cook until brown.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for about 10 minutes.

  3. Add the gravy and sauce, stirring until boiling.

Serve

  1. Add the meat, baste well with the gravy, and serve on a dish with the macaroni arranged as a border.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Tinned meat
Provides the main body of the dish, and its bones and trimmings add flavour to the stock.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base and border that holds the dish together on the plate.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion mixture so the gravy becomes smooth and clings to the meat.
Butter or dripping
Carries the onion and gives the gravy a rich, savoury fat base.
Stock or gravy
Supplies the liquid for the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour. Cooking the flour in fat for a full ten minutes drives off its raw, pasty taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stirring in the liquid too early or too quickly can leave lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, ketchup. 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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