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Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with white sauce and breadcrumb topping.

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 ↓

Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into three-inch pieces and add to 3 pints of boiling salted water.

  2. Boil for twenty minutes or until soft, then drain and rinse with cold water to prevent sticking.

  3. Cut the macaroni into one-inch pieces and place in a shallow baking dish.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. Prepare a white sauce by combining 1½ cups of milk, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 1 tablespoon of flour, then add the salt.

  2. Pour the white sauce over the macaroni.

  3. Mix the bread crumbs with the melted butter and sprinkle over the top.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the crumbs are brown.

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it its body and chew.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that moistens the pasta.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that coats the macaroni.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, melted, helps the crumb topping brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Rinsing the macaroni after boiling. Cold water stops the cooked pasta from sticking together. Cooking continues in residual heat, so the pasta should be drained promptly once soft.

“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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