Name: Macaroni D LA Reine
Ingredients: 6 oz macaroni; 6 oz rich white cheese; ½ pint rich cream; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon pounded mace; 2 oz butter; bread crumbs (fried and dried)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni D LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Cook the macaroni according to package instructions and drain well.
In a saucepan, boil the cream and gently dissolve the cheese in it.
Add the salt, cayenne, and mace to the cheese mixture and stir until smooth.

Combine and serve

Combine the cooked macaroni with the cheese mixture and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a hot serving dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and serve immediately.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,655 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 structure of the dish, holding the sauce within its tubes.
Rich white cheese: Melts into the cream to give the sauce its body, richness and savoury flavour.
Rich cream: Provides fat and moisture, letting the cheese melt smoothly into a silky sauce.
Bread crumbs: Fried and dried crumbs add a crisp, golden contrast to the soft sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the dish, though its exact role in the record is not stated.

The step that matters

Dissolve the cheese gently. Cheese proteins tighten and turn grainy or oily if overheated, so the cream should be boiled and the cheese stirred in over gentle heat until smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, cream, pepper, butter, bread):

Nutmegfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

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

Brown Bread461 recipes

Macaroni and Cheese102 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Macaroni D LA Reine