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Maccaroni Cheese

A baked macaroni dish with cheese, butter, milk, and mustard, topped with cheese and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Maccaroni Cheese

Ingredients

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.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the macaroni in a saucepan with boiling water and 1 teaspoon of salt until tender.

  2. Remove the macaroni and cut it into convenient pieces.

  3. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour over medium heat for 1 minute.

  4. Add milk and seasoning, and let it boil for 1 minute.

Bake and serve

  1. Stir in the macaroni and half the cheese, then transfer to a dish.

  2. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or under the grill.

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 + 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. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 (in the method)
Forms the bulk and chewy structure of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the roux with the flour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats the pasta.
Cheese
Adds flavour and creaminess, and browns on top when baked or grilled.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter for one minute. Flour must be cooked in the melted butter before the milk is added so the starch swells evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly without a raw, floury taste or lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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