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Ramakins

A baked macaroni dish with cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ramakins

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Wash the macaroni and simmer it in a little broth with pounded mace and coarse sea salt until tender.

  2. Remove the macaroni from the broth and place it in a dish.

Top and bake

  1. Grate cheese over the macaroni, then cover with fine bread crumbs.

  2. Melt butter and pour it over the crumbs using a colander.

  3. Place the dish in a Dutch oven to roast the cheese and brown the bread crumbs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mace + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 main body of the dish, cooked until tender in the broth.
Cheese
Melts over the pasta to give a rich, creamy, savory layer.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the crumbs turn golden as they brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that contrasts with the soft pasta.

The step that matters

Browning the bread crumbs in the Dutch oven. Butter-coated crumbs brown through the Maillard reaction, which needs dry heat. Watching closely keeps the crumbs golden and crisp rather than pale or scorched.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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