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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A sweet macaroni pudding made with milk, cinnamon, lime, orange‑flower water, sugar, egg yolks, and optional prunes or marrow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a sufficient quantity of macaroni in milk until tender.

  2. Lay the cooked macaroni into a pudding dish lined with pastry.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, season 1 pint of milk with cinnamon, orange-flower water, lime zest, lime juice, and sugar.

  2. Beat in 4 egg yolks until well combined.

  3. Thicken the milk mixture over low heat.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the thickened milk mixture over the macaroni.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and rasped almonds on top of the pastry.

  3. Layer plumped prunes or plums over the macaroni.

  4. Shred marrow over the macaroni before serving.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Orange + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cinnamon + plumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture and help it set into a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard and to the sprinkled top.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet custard.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk mixture over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the milk gets too hot. Gentle, steady heat with constant stirring lets the custard thicken smoothly.

Swap the plum

The recipe marks plum as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, orange, lime, sugar, egg, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, orange, lime, sugar, egg, almond. 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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