Name: Veal Soup
Ingredients: 3 pounds veal, broken into pieces; 4 quarts water; ¼ pound macaroni; butter; salt; pepper

Why it works: Veal and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,049 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Combine the veal and water in a large pot and bring to a boil.
Strain the veal soup and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Cook the macaroni

In a separate dish, boil the macaroni in enough water to cover it until tender.
Add a little butter to the macaroni after cooking.

Finish the soup

Add the cooked macaroni along with the water it was boiled in to the soup.

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.

Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,381 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal: Releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the soup its body and savory taste.
Macaroni: Adds starch and bulk, making the soup more filling and giving it a soft, tender bite.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the macaroni.

“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.