Here is the the Chowhound thread.
It included two new ideas for me
This one from NYT uses cottage cheese, no making a bechamel sauce or pre-boiling the noodles!
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/dining/recipe-creamy-macaroni-and-cheese.html
And this prelude to John Thorn’s recipe
"As I looked over recipes for homemade macaroni and cheese, I determined that there were two distinct styles of preparation. The more common variety is béchamel-based, where macaroni is blanketed with a cheese-flavored white sauce, usually topped with crumbs and baked. The other variety, the kind my mother always made, is custard-based. In this version, a mixture of egg and milk is poured over layers of grated cheese and noodles. As the dish bakes, the egg, milk and cheese set into a custard. "
An article about it in the NYT in 2006
"…in a 20-year-old cookbook called “Simple Cooking,” the problem became clear:
" A good dish of macaroni and cheese is hard to find these days. The recipes in most cookbooks are not to be trustedusually it is their vexatious infatuation with white sauce, a noxious paste of flour-thickened milk, for this dish flavored with a tiny grating of cheese. Contrary to popular belief, this is not macaroni and cheese but macaroni with cheese sauce. It is awful stuff and every cookbook in which it appears should be thrown out the window."
The book’s author, John Thorne, still adheres to this position, but said that he has largely given up the fight."
