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Macaroni Soup

A simple soup made with macaroni, butter, onion, stock, and optional grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni with butter and onion until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

Make the soup

  1. Pour 2 quarts of stock over the macaroni.

  2. Simmer for about 10 minutes, watching to prevent breaking or becoming bulky.

  3. Add grated cheese for extra flavor if desired.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 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

Macaroni
Provides the starchy body of the soup and the bulk that fills each spoonful.
Stock
Supplies the liquid and most of the savory flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the soup.
Onion
Adds savory, aromatic sweetness as it softens in the butter and cooks down.
Grated cheese
Adds salty, savory depth and a little richness when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Simmering the macaroni in the stock. Pasta keeps absorbing liquid as it sits, so it can soften too far, break apart, or swell and turn the soup bulky. Simmering gently and checking often keeps the pasta tender with a good texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese. 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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