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Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni pudding made with milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, peach water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

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

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool, then discard the cinnamon and lemon peel.

  3. Beat the eggs with the sugar and peach water.

  4. Melt the butter and mix it with the macaroni and egg mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking dish and pour the mixture in.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  3. Optionally, add a puff pastry crust around the edge of the dish.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy body of the pudding, soaking up milk and holding the custard together.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that cooks with the pasta and sets into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps keep the texture soft and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes. Eggs set through gentle heat; too hot or too long can curdle the custard and make it watery or rubbery. Bake until just set in the centre.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, peach, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, peach, 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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