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Macaroni, Boiled

A boiled macaroni dish cooked with milk, butter, and topped with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break up and wash 1 pint of macaroni, then place it in a shallow basin and cover with cold water.

  2. Set the basin into another basin of warm water and place on the fire.

  3. After 15 minutes, add 1 pint of milk and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  4. Let it cook for 10 more minutes.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  6. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  7. Serve carefully to avoid breaking the macaroni.

Bake the leftovers

  1. For leftovers, butter a shallow dish and add the macaroni.

  2. Grate old cheese over it.

  3. Brown in the oven.

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

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 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

Macaroni
Forms the main body of the dish and holds its shape when cooked gently.
Milk
Provides moisture and a creamy sauce as it cooks into the pasta.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture.
Old cheese
Melts over the macaroni and browns in the oven for flavor and a golden top.

The step that matters

Cooking in the warm water bath. Milk scorches and sticks easily when heated directly. Setting the basin into warm water keeps the heat gentle so the milk cooks evenly without burning.

“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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