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Macaroni Plain

A macaroni dish cooked in a thickened milk sauce seasoned with butter, pepper, sea salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Plain

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.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni sticks in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the milk with flour in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Season the sauce with butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and paprika.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the macaroni.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 2½ hours.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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
Forms the bulk and body of the dish, holding the sauce in its tubes and ridges.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the sauce, which flour thickens into a creamy coating.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce by swelling with heat and binding the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel and flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot milk long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce. Stirring prevents lumps, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste.

“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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