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Dessert

Sweet Macaroni

A sweet macaroni dish cooked with milk, sugar, eggs, and flavored with citrus rind or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a pot.

  2. Gently add the macaroni, salt, and lemon or orange rind (or cinnamon).

  3. Simmer until the macaroni is tender.

  4. Add the sugar and boil until the macaroni is soft and swollen.

  5. Drain the macaroni and place it in a hot dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and stir them into the hot milk.

  2. Heat the mixture over low heat until it thickens, then pour it over the macaroni.

Alternative topping

  1. Alternatively, heat and sweeten the cream, pour it over the macaroni, and dust with cinnamon.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Milk
Cooks the macaroni and forms the liquid base that thickens into the custard.
Macaroni
Softens and swells in the hot milk, giving the dish its body.
Eggs
Set gently when heated, thickening the milk into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk and macaroni.
Lemon or orange rind
Adds a citrus aroma to the milk as the macaroni cooks.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg mixture over low heat. Egg proteins set into a smooth custard only when heated gently. Too much heat or too fast a boil can curdle the eggs into lumps, so keep the heat low and stir while it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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