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Curried Haccaront

A curry‑flavored macaroni dish with stock, curry powder, arrowroot, lemon juice, optional cream, and optional coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Curried Haccaront

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water with a small bit of butter for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, mix the stock or gravy with curry powder and arrowroot, and boil for 20 minutes.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the drained macaroni to the sauce and toss gently until well coated.

  2. Stir in cream or béchamel just before adding the macaroni.

  3. Add lemon juice afterwards.

Coconut option

  1. If using, simmer grated coconut in the gravy for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain and press the coconut out.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Beef + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ribband macaroni
Forms the starchy base that holds the sauce and gives the dish its body.
Beef or veal stock or gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury meaty flavour.
Fine curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour and aroma that define the dish.
Arrowroot
Thickens the stock into a glossy sauce that clings to the pasta.
Rich cream or béchamel
Adds richness and softens the texture of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or béchamel. Dairy can curdle or turn grainy when it meets acid or very hot liquid. Stirring it in gently, with the sauce no longer boiling, keeps it smooth. Adding the lemon juice afterwards helps avoid curdling.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lemon, cream, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, cream, butter. 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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