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Macaroni and Cheese

A baked macaroni and cheese with butter, milk, cheese, shallot, pepper, salt, cayenne, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Macaroni and Cheese

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into 1-inch pieces and blanch in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the macaroni and add the shallot and hot milk; cook until the macaroni absorbs all the milk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove the shallot and layer the cooked macaroni in a buttered dish with grated cheese, pepper, salt, and butter.

  2. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with cheese, a little cayenne, and fine bread crumbs on top.

  3. Bake in the oven until browned.

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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 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 bulk and body of the dish, holding the sauce in its starchy structure.
Hot milk
Becomes the sauce as the pasta absorbs it, giving the dish its creamy moisture.
Grated cheese
Melts into the milk to add richness, savoury flavour and a stringy, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Shallot
Infuses the milk with a mild onion-like aroma, then is removed before layering.

The step that matters

Cook until the macaroni absorbs all the milk. If the milk is not fully absorbed the dish stays soupy, while overcooking dries the pasta and the sauce can turn grainy or greasy. Watching the liquid as the starch swells keeps the texture creamy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, milk, bread, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, milk, bread, pepper. 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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