Name: Another Way to Dress Macaroni
Ingredients: 8 ounces macaroni; ½ cup milk; ½ cup water; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 ounce fresh butter; 1 cup thick cream; grated nutmeg (optional)

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 ↓

Another Way to Dress Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

Boil the macaroni in a mixture of milk and water with salt and butter until tender.
Drain the water from the macaroni.

Finish and serve

Mix the macaroni with thick cream and heat until hot.
If desired, add grated nutmeg 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,685 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Forms the starchy body of the dish, absorbing the liquid and cream as it cooks.
Thick cream: Adds richness and a silky texture that coats the pasta.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth, mellow flavour.
Milk: Adds liquid and a subtle sweetness as the pasta cooks.

“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.