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Stewed Macaroni

A simple macaroni dish cooked with milk, butter, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Stewed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni in water or strong beef stock until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni nearly dry.

Finish and serve

  1. If cooked in water, add milk and butter.

  2. Stir in grated cheese.

  3. Top with additional cheese.

  4. Serve hot.

  5. If cooked in beef stock, add only the cheese.

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 structure of the dish, holding the cheese sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the cheese blend into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Grated cheese
Provides savoury flavour and melts into the sauce to make it creamy.

The step that matters

Drain the macaroni nearly dry. Excess cooking water dilutes the sauce and keeps the cheese from melting into a thick, smooth coating, so the pasta ends up watery.

“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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