Name: Tomato and Macaroni Soup
Ingredients: 6 sticks of macaroni; 2 quarts of stewed or canned tomatoes; Salt to taste; Flour (optional, for thickening)

Why it works: Tomato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,065 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomato and Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

6 sticks of macaroni
2 quarts of stewed or canned tomatoes
Salt to taste
Flour (optional, for thickening)

Directions

Cook the macaroni

Break the macaroni into small pieces.
Drop the macaroni into boiling water.
Cook for 1 hour or until perfectly tender.

Prepare the tomatoes

Rub the tomatoes through a colander to remove seeds and fragments.

Assemble the soup

Drain the cooked macaroni.
Cut each piece into tiny rings.
Add the rings to the strained tomatoes.
Season with salt.
Boil for a few moments.
If the tomato soup is thin, slightly thicken it with a little flour before adding the macaroni.

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.

Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,065 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Provides the pasta bulk and chewy texture that makes the soup substantial.
Tomatoes: Form the soup base, supplying moisture, body and bright acidity.
Flour: Thickens the tomato liquid slightly, giving it a fuller body.

“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.