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Macaroni Soup

A hearty soup of macaroni, beef, vegetables, and potatoes served with cold meat, pickles, stewed fruit, buttered bread, milk, coffee, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling water until tender.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the beef and vegetables until cooked through.

  3. Add the potatoes and cook until soft.

  4. Combine the macaroni, beef, vegetables, and potatoes in a large bowl.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meat, pickles, and stewed fruit on the side.

  2. Spread butter on bread and serve with milk and coffee.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the pasta body of the soup and soaks up the broth as it cooks.
Boiled beef
Supplies the savoury, meaty flavour and protein that the broth is built on.
Potatoes
Soften into soft pieces that add starch, body and a mild thickness to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the bread a soft, moist texture.
Bread
Provides the starchy base that the butter is spread on and eaten with the milk and coffee.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury parts of the meal.

The step that matters

Cook the macaroni until tender. Macaroni keeps cooking in the hot broth and softens further in the bowl. Pulling it out once it is just tender keeps it from turning mushy and stops it from absorbing too much liquid.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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