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Noodles and Cheese

A baked noodle dish with butter, flour, cheese, and buttered crumbs topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Noodles and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the noodles

  1. Cook the noodles in boiling salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce and combine

  1. In a saucepan, melt 3 tbsp of butter, then stir in 3 tbsp of flour to make a white sauce.

  2. Add the cooked noodles and 2 tbsp of grated cheese to the sauce and mix well.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish and top with 2 tbsp of buttered crumbs.

  2. Place the dish in a pan of hot water and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Noodles
Form the bulk of the dish and hold the sauce and cheese together.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor to the crumbs.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a white sauce that coats the noodles.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to add savory flavor and creaminess.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath. Setting the dish in hot water moderates the oven heat so the sauce cooks gently and does not curdle or dry out before the top browns.

“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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