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To Make a Dish of Sweet Macaroni

A sweet macaroni dish cooked in milk with cinnamon and lemon peel, topped with apple puree and a frothy egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

To Make a Dish of Sweet Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

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

  2. Transfer the macaroni to a glass dish.

Prepare the apple and egg topping

  1. Peel and core the apples, then boil them in a small amount of water until soft.

  2. Drain the apples in a sieve.

  3. Mash the apple pulp in a separate bowl until frothy.

  4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  5. Sift and stir in the lump sugar with the egg whites.

  6. Combine the apple pulp and egg mixture until it looks like stiff snow.

Assemble

  1. Spread the snow over the macaroni as high as possible.

  2. Optionally, add custard on the macaroni before the snow.

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 + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the tender base that soaks up the milk and gives the dish its body.
Milk
Cooks into the macaroni, adding moisture and a soft, creamy texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they create the light, airy foam that makes up the topping.
Apples
Cooked and mashed into a pulp that adds moisture, body and fruity sweetness.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the topping and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites hold air only when whipped fully and kept free of grease or yolk. Under-whipped or deflated whites make the topping slump instead of standing high over the macaroni.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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