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Macaroni Cheese

A baked macaroni dish with cheese, milk, butter, salt, pepper, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Macaroni Cheese

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 Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the macaroni and boil it in plenty of salted water for 30 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the macaroni and cheese alternately in a dish, with cheese on top.

  2. Fill the dish with milk and add a little butter.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. If desired, add pieces of butter and a sprinkling of mustard, salt, and pepper between layers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 between its layers.
Cheese
Melts into the milk to create a rich, creamy sauce with savoury flavour.
Milk
Provides moisture and, as it bakes, its proteins set into a creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C). Milk proteins set gently into a creamy sauce as the dish heats. Too much heat or time can make the sauce dry, grainy, or separated, so check the dish as it bakes.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, milk, butter, pepper. 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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