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Dessert

Macaroni with Lemon and Cinnamon

A sweet macaroni dish flavored with lemon, cinnamon, butter, and powdered sugar or cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Macaroni with Lemon and Cinnamon

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in water until tender and it has soaked up the liquid.

  2. Use a frying kettle for cooking.

  3. Add butter and salt, then cover for five minutes without cooking.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the lemon, cinnamon, and any remaining ingredients.

  2. Simmer for ten minutes after boiling before serving in a deep dish.

  3. Be careful not to break the macaroni while stirring.

  4. Serve with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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, softening as it absorbs the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, moist mouthfeel.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor.
Powdered sugar or cream and sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Stir the macaroni gently. Breaking the pasta releases surface starch and damages its shape, which can make the dish gluey and uneven in texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, butter, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, butter, sugar. 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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