My mother used to make macaroni as a side dish sometimes. Just plain macaroni but she’d top it with browned butter.

I don’t think I ate it very much.

In recent years I’ve tried to tinker with that a little bit.

I finally came up with adding chopped scallions and ripe olives, and I found that to be a nice combination.

But once I found it, it sort of fell by the wayside.

The other night there was a scene on some TV show featuring macaroni and suddenly I got a yen for macaroni and browned butter again.

Not having any scallions or ripe olives, I wondered what else I might try.

I’ve previously found that adding broccoli to macaroni and cheese works well, so I knew it should work fine with just the macaroni and browned butter. But was there something else that I could add that would really goose the flavor?

Of course there was.

Bacon makes everything taste better.