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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A sweet baked macaroni dessert cooked with milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and flavored with vanilla, clove, or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces about 1 inch long.

  2. Cook the macaroni in plenty of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the water and cook the macaroni in 1 quart of milk with 1 cup of sugar and 1 slice of butter for another 20 minutes over low heat.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish and let it cool.

Make the custard and bake

  1. Beat in 3 eggs and flavor with vanilla, clove oil, or cinnamon oil.

  2. Alternatively, use 4 eggs, reserving 2 egg whites to beat stiffly for the top.

  3. Bake slowly until set, then brown the top in the oven for 1 to 2 minutes.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Vanilla + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 pudding, absorbing milk and softening as it cooks.
Milk
Cooks with the pasta to create the creamy base of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown on top.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and set during baking to give it a firm, custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until set. Eggs set at moderate heat; baking too hot or too long can curdle the custard and make it grainy or watery. Slow baking keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

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