Name: Macaroni, Savoury
Ingredients: 4 oz macaroni; 1 tablespoon grated cheese; 1 teaspoon anchovy essence

Why it works: Cheese and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 164 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Macaroni, Savoury

Ingredients

4 oz macaroni
1 tablespoon grated cheese
1 teaspoon anchovy essence

Directions

Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until tender, then drain.
In a bowl, mix the cooked macaroni with grated cheese and anchovy essence.
Serve hot.

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.

Cheese + anchovytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together164 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 provides its starchy, chewy body.
Grated cheese: Melts slightly into the warm pasta, adding richness, savoury flavour and a creamy coating.
Anchovy essence: Adds a deep, salty savoury note that enhances the cheese flavour.

“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.