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Macaroni Cheese

A baked macaroni dish with cheese sauce made from butter, flour, milk, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Macaroni Cheese

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour and butter together.

  2. Gradually add the cheese and milk, stirring until it comes to a boil.

  3. Once the cheese is melted, the sauce should be creamy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a porcelain baking dish and layer in the boiled macaroni.

  2. Pour some sauce over each layer of macaroni until the dish is full.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

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

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 structure of the dish, holding the sauce between layers.
Cheese
Melts into the milk and flour to give the sauce its creamy body and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the pasta.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Bringing the cheese sauce to a boil. Stirring as the milk heats keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps. Once the cheese melts, heat should stay gentle so the sauce does not turn grainy or oily.

“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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