Jackie Kennedy’s 4-Ingredient Casserole Is Creamy and Dreamy

The story goes that Jackie Kennedy stuck her recipe for JFK’s favorite daiquiri to the White House kitchen wall, but I wonder if her 4-ingredient Casserole Marie Blanche was also part of that DIY culinary collage. This comforting bake combines the First Lady’s love of French cuisine with ’60s-era American one-dish-wonders. Egg noodle and cottage cheese-core, it’s studded with fresh chives and easy as pie—but, y’know, it’s a casserole. 

I grew up on egg noodles in Pennsylvania Dutch country, with that ultra-satisfyingly chewy texture. What a dream it was for me when I was recently invited to my friends’ Easter-slash-Passover lunch (she’s Ashkenazi, he leans Easter Bunny), where I tasted homemade, egg-noodle-packed Jewish kugel. “Sweet noodles with cornflakes! Where have you been all my life?” 

Jackie’s recipe has been likened to the savory version of the Jewish delicacy. Yes, she may have “ordered” the pasta more than she cooked it, but if it’s good enough for the time she served it to her sister, Lee Radziwill, and her brother-in-law, Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill, at the White House, it’s good enough for the rest of us normies.

How I Make Jackie Kennedy’s Casserole

After preheating the oven, I boiled the egg noodles and strained—no rinsing. In a large bowl, I mixed the noodles with sour cream, cottage cheese, salt, white pepper, and chopped chives. After scooping everything into a 2-quart greased casserole dish and dotting it with little cubes of butter, I baked it for 30 minutes.

I followed Jackie’s instructions, but you can add more of the creamy parts or fewer noodles. Just don’t skip the butter, which keeps everything from drying out. Like Jackie, Julia Child also thought white pepper should be used in ivory-colored recipes so it doesn’t speckle the presentation. But black pepper works great, too, if you don’t mind the flecks. 

Simple Tweaks

I couldn’t find “cream-style cottage cheese” at the store. I’m not even sure what it is, but curdy cottage cheese almost blends into the sour cream. You could always blend up the cottage cheese first in a food processor.

This probably needed double the amount of salt. But I love the pop of the tangy cheese and grassy chives against the starchy pasta. 

Turn this accompaniment into your main squeeze by tossing in pulled, roasted chicken before baking, or add your protein of choice. Then, book your inner First Lady a well-deserved trip to Paris—or a solid, uninterrupted five minutes on the couch.