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Maccaroni in Curry Sauce

A pasta dish of macaroni simmered in a curry-flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Maccaroni in Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in slightly salted water with a small amount of butter until tender, about 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and set aside.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Combine the stock or gravy, curry powder, arrowroot, and lemon juice in a pot.

  2. Heat the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. If desired, stir in cream or béchamel just before adding the macaroni.

Combine and serve

  1. Gently toss the macaroni in the sauce until well coated.

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

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

  3. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Arrowroot + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Beef + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,128 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ribband maccaroni
Forms the starchy base that the curry sauce clings to and fills the dish.
Beef or veal stock or gravy
Provides the savory liquid body of the sauce.
Fine curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a glossy, coating consistency as it heats.
Rich cream or béchamel
Adds fat and richness, softening the sauce's texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce with arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens when heated, but it can break down and thin if boiled too hard or for too long. Keep the sauce at a gentle simmer so it stays smooth and glossy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, arrowroot, cream. 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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