The recipe
A Mostaccioli Salad with a Sweet-Tangy Eagle Brand Dressing
Mostaccioli Macaroni Salad with Eagle Brand Milk comes from printed page 17 of Our Favorites. It starts like a colorful pasta salad—mostaccioli, grated carrot, green and red peppers, onion, tomatoes and diced cheese—but the dressing takes it somewhere far more distinctive.
Instead of a straightforward mayonnaise dressing, the source combines Eagle Brand milk with Miracle Whip, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper. The result is a sweet-tangy dressing designed to coat the pasta and vegetables before the salad chills for several hours.
Why it matters
Why This One Is Worth Bringing Back
Mostaccioli Macaroni Salad with Eagle Brand Milk stands out immediately because it does not use the pasta shape most readers would expect from something called macaroni salad. The source calls for a full pound of mostaccioli, giving the dish a larger tube shape that holds onto the creamy dressing and pieces of vegetables.
The dressing is the real archive-worthy detail. Eagle Brand milk, Miracle Whip, sugar and vinegar create a deliberately sweet-and-tangy mixture, while salt and pepper keep it from reading like dessert. It is a combination that feels very specific to the source rather than interchangeable with a standard deli macaroni salad.
The salad also packs in grated carrot, both red and green pepper, onion, tomatoes and diced cheese. The cookbook’s final note—best if chilled several hours before serving—makes that resting time part of the intended preparation rather than merely a storage suggestion.
Modern kitchen notes
If You're Making It Today
These are modern editorial suggestions, not changes to the archived recipe. When a variation comes directly from the original source, we will say so.
Use mostaccioli, not elbow macaroni
The pasta shape is one of the recipe’s defining details. Short tubular mostaccioli gives this salad a different look and bite from a conventional elbow-macaroni salad.
Preserve the unusual dressing before adjusting it
Eagle Brand milk, Miracle Whip, sugar and vinegar are not accidental pairings in the source. If you reduce the sweetness or swap the dressing base, that becomes a modern variation rather than the preserved recipe.
Chill it for several hours
The source specifically says the salad is best after a long chill. That gives the pasta time to absorb some of the dressing and lets the sweet-tangy flavor settle across the vegetables and cheese.
Recipe card
The Preserved Recipe
Mostaccioli Macaroni Salad with Eagle Brand Milk
Ingredients
- 16 oz. Mostaccioli pasta
- 2 medium carrots grated
- 1 green pepper diced
- 1 large onion diced
- 3 tomatoes chopped
- 8 slices cheese diced
- 1 red pepper diced
Dressing
- 1 can Eagle Brand milk
- 1/2 c. sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 c. Miracle Whip
- 1/4 c. vinegar
- 1/2 tsp. pepper
Instructions
- Cook and drain pasta. Add other ingredients. Mix dressing ingredients. Add to pasta mixture and combine gently. Best if chilled several hours before serving.
From the archive
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