Name: Macaroni Baked in Cream
Ingredients: ½ pound macaroni; Coarse sea salt; Butter; Rich cream

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni Baked in Cream

Ingredients

½ pound macaroni
Coarse sea salt
Butter
Rich cream

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Break the macaroni into pieces and simmer it in boiling water until tender.
Drain the macaroni through a colander.

Assemble

Butter a baking dish and add the drained macaroni.
Sprinkle the macaroni generously with coarse sea salt.
Dot the macaroni with pieces of butter.
Pour rich cream over the macaroni until the dish is full.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 45 minutes.
Serve directly from the baking dish.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, 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 and starchy structure of the dish once baked.
Butter: Adds richness and flavour, and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Rich cream: Supplies fat and moisture that thicken and coat the macaroni as it bakes.

“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.