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Maccaroni in Curry Sauce

A pasta dish of macaroni simmered in a curry‑flavored sauce with stock, curry powder, arrowroot, lemon juice, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Maccaroni in Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pasta

  1. Cook the macaroni in slightly salted water with a small amount of butter until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Combine the stock or gravy, curry powder, and arrowroot in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream or béchamel just before adding the macaroni.

  4. Toss the macaroni in the sauce until well coated.

  5. Add the lemon juice before serving.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Beef + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Maccaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and soaks up the sauce as it is tossed together.
Beef or veal stock or gravy
Provides the savoury liquid base that becomes the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Arrowroot
Thickens the simmering liquid into a glossy sauce that clings to the pasta.
Cream or béchamel
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce before adding the cream. Arrowroot needs to boil briefly to thicken fully, and cream added to a boiling sauce can separate or turn grainy, so it goes in just before the macaroni.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lemon, cream, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, cream, butter. 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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