Customise this recipe to make your perfect macaroni cheese for a quick family dinner that everyone will love. You can also make it macaroni salad extra vegetables, bacon and breadcrumbs on top.

Melt the butter over a medium heat in a saucepan slightly larger than that used for the macaroni. Add the flour and stir to form a roux, cooking for a few minutes. Gradually whisk in the milk, a little at a time. 15 minutes to a thickened and smooth sauce. Meanwhile, preheat the grill to hot.

6oz of the cheese and stir until it is well combined and melted. Add the macaroni to the sauce and mix well. Transfer to a deep suitably-sized ovenproof dish. Sprinkle over the remaining Cheddar and the Parmesan and place the dish under the hot grill. Cook until the cheese is browned and bubbling. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Read about our approach to external linking. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Not to be confused with Macaron. The word “macaroni” is often used synonymously with elbow-shaped macaroni, as it is the variety most often used in macaroni and cheese recipes. In Italian, maccheroni refers to elongated pasta, not necessarily in tubular form.

This general meaning is still retained outside Rome and in different languages which borrowed the word. The many varieties sometimes differ from each other because of the texture of each pasta: rigatoni and tortiglioni, for example, have ridges down their lengths, while chifferi, lumache, lumaconi, pipe, pipette, etc. However, the product as well as the name derive from the ancient Greek “Macaria”. Alessio argues that the word can have two origins. John Dickie instead says that the word macaroni, and its earlier variants like maccheroni, “comes from maccare, meaning to pound or crush. The word first appears in English as makerouns in the 1390 Forme of Cury, which records the earliest recipe for macaroni and cheese. As is the case with dishes made with other types of pasta, macaroni and cheese is a popular dish and is often made with elbow macaroni.