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Macaroni Pudding

A sweet macaroni pudding baked with milk, lemon, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, peach water, raisin wine, and optional marmalade or jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Simmer the macaroni in milk with lemon and cinnamon until tender.

  2. Transfer to a dish and mix in eggs, sugar, nutmeg, peach water, and raisin wine.

Bake

  1. Bake with a pastry crust around the edge.

  2. For variation, add a layer of orange marmalade or raspberry jam and omit the peach water.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 pudding, softening in milk to give a tender, starchy texture.
Milk
Cooks with the macaroni and sets with the eggs to form a creamy custard.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding and giving it structure and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Raisin wine
Adds moisture and a fruity, fermented aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake with a pastry crust around the edge. Egg custards set through gentle heat; if baked too hot or too long, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy and watery. Watch for a set centre that still wobbles slightly.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, raisin. 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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