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Curried Maccaroni

A macaroni dish flavored with curry powder, stock, and optional cream, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Curried Maccaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water with a small bit of butter for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and set aside.

Make the curry sauce and finish

  1. In a pot, mix the stock or gravy with curry powder and arrowroot, and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the drained macaroni to the pot and toss gently until well coated.

  3. Stir in cream or béchamel just before adding the macaroni, and add lemon juice afterwards.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Beef + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ribband macaroni
Forms the bulk and body of the dish, holding the sauce on its surface.
Beef or veal stock or gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury meaty flavour for the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Arrowroot
Thickens the stock into a glossy sauce that clings to the macaroni.
Cream or béchamel
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture that softens the curry.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Adding lemon juice to the cream. Acid can curdle cream or béchamel, especially when hot. Adding the lemon juice after the cream, as the method directs, and keeping the sauce from boiling helps it stay smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lemon, cream, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, cream, butter. 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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