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Macaroni a L'lTALIENNE

A macaroni dish cooked in salted boiling water, drained, and served with melted butter and grated Parmesan and Gruyere cheeses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and gruyere cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Macaroni a L'lTALIENNE

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Fill a 3-quart kettle with boiling water and add 3 teaspoons of salt.

  2. Boil the macaroni for 25 minutes until perfectly tender.

  3. Drain the macaroni thoroughly in a colander.

Serve

  1. Serve in a hot dish with melted butter and a mix of grated Parmesan and Gruyere cheese on the side.

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. Parmesan cheese + gruyere cheesetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + gruyere cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 is cooked until tender in boiling salted water.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and carrying flavour.
Grated parmesan cheese
Adds a salty, savoury flavour that deepens the taste of the pasta.
Grated gruyere cheese
Adds a nutty, savoury flavour and a mild melting quality.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni for 25 minutes until perfectly tender. Pasta keeps cooking in its own residual heat after draining, so overcooking softens its structure and makes it mushy. Draining thoroughly prevents excess water from diluting the butter and cheese served with it.

“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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