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White Macaroni Soup

A creamy soup made with macaroni, milk, bone stock, butter, and optional vegetables, finished with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare the stock from veal or mutton bones for a white soup.

  2. If no vegetables were boiled in the stock, simmer an onion or leek, a slice of turnip, and a small piece of celery in the stock for 20 minutes, then strain.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan. Stir in the cornflour.

  2. Pour in the milk and stock. Stir until the mixture boils.

  3. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes. Strain the macaroni and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  4. Add the macaroni to the soup and simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Season the soup with salt, a dust of white pepper, and a few drops of lemon juice before serving.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides body and bulk, becoming tender as it simmers in the soup.
Butter
Forms the base with the cornflour, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cornflour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, velvety body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness that makes the soup white and mellow.
Bone stock
Forms the main liquid and carries the savoury flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour into the butter and adding the liquid. Cornflour must be cooked in fat and then brought to the boil with the liquid so its starch swells and thickens evenly; adding it lumpy or without boiling leaves the soup grainy and thin.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, turnip, celery, white pepper, lemon):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, turnip, celery, white pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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