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Macaroni a LA Casino

Macaroni a la Casino is a baked macaroni dish with tomato sauce, cheese, anchovy essence, cream, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 a LA Casino

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. In a pan, fry the onion and butter together without discoloring.

  2. Add the flour, then the milk, and cook slowly for 10 minutes.

  3. Rub the pulp from the tomatoes through a sieve and add it to the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. Stir in the cheese, anchovy essence, cream, pepper, salt, and boiled macaroni cut into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Pour the mixture into a dish and cover with cream cheese sauce.

  3. Garnish with croutons of fried bread and brown quickly in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or with a salamander.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and holds the sauce in its tubes.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and enriches the base sauce with fat.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the macaroni.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, setting into a creamy body with the flour.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth and helps the sauce brown on top.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce once their pulp is strained in.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion and butter without discoloring. Browning the onion turns its sugars bitter and darkens the sauce, so it should be softened gently over low heat to keep the flavour mild and the sauce pale.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, anchovy, onion, parmesan cheese, butter, flour, cream. 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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