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Macaroni Soup

A beef broth with macaroni, onion, carrot, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef, bone, and cold water in an earthen pot.

  2. Set the pot on a cool part of the stove for 3 hours to heat gradually.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Cook gently for 30 minutes with the onion, carrot, and parsley.

  5. Strain the soup through a soup strainer, then through a piece of wet linen for clarity.

  6. If the soup has reduced, add boiling water to make 1½ cups.

  7. Remove the fat from the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, cook the macaroni in a cup of boiling water until tender.

  2. Add salt, pepper, sugar, and clove.

  3. Heat the soup.

  4. Pour the soup over the macaroni just 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup beef
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and savour.
Bone
Adds marrow and collagen that enrich the broth and give it more body.
Macaroni
Provides soft, tender pasta that absorbs some of the broth's flavor.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth as it simmers.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and mild earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Strain the soup through a wet linen. Straining through a damp cloth catches fine particles that would otherwise cloud the broth, so the soup stays clear. Remove the fat before heating so the broth is not greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsley, pepper, sugar, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsley, pepper, sugar, clove. 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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