Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Macaroni

A simple stewed macaroni dish made with butter, beef stock, flour, cream, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the macaroni in water until tender, then drain well.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the beef stock and flour.

  3. Add the cream, salt, and white pepper, and stir until combined.

  4. Add the macaroni, bring to a boil, and serve hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 body of the dish and absorbs the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the melted butter and stock. Stirring the flour into the melted butter and liquid helps prevent lumps, so the sauce thickens evenly once the cream is added.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes