Name: To Make Macaroni with Cheese
Ingredients: 1 pound macaroni; ½ cup coarse sea salt; ½ pound Dutch cheese, grated; ½ cup butter

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Macaroni with Cheese

Ingredients

1 pound macaroni
½ cup coarse sea salt
½ pound Dutch cheese, grated
½ cup butter

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

Boil water in a saucepan and add salt.
Add macaroni and cook until soft, then drain in a sieve.

Layer and bake

In a deep dish, layer macaroni, butter pieces, and grated cheese until all ingredients are used.
Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.
Serve in the baking dish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 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 bulk and body of the dish, holding the cheese and butter together.
Dutch cheese: Melts into the macaroni to give the dish its creamy, savoury flavour.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and helping the cheese turn smooth.

“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.