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Macaroni Al Napolitano

A savory macaroni soup made with sweetbreads, onion, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni Al Napolitano

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads and soak them in salted water for 15 minutes.

  2. Stew the sweetbreads with the minced onion in 1 pint of cold water and a little salt until done.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Wash the broken macaroni and cook it gently in the broth from the sweetbreads until tender but not breaking.

  2. Chop the sweetbreads and stir the butter into the macaroni, which should have absorbed all the broth.

  3. Add the minced sweetbreads and season with parsley, pepper, and salt.

Rest and serve

  1. Cover and leave in hot water (not over the fire) for 5 minutes before serving in a deep dish.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich texture to the macaroni.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that absorbs the broth and gives the dish its body.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the broth used for stewing the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Cooking the macaroni gently in the broth. Macaroni cooked too hard breaks apart and becomes mushy. Gentle simmering lets the pasta soften evenly while absorbing the flavourful broth, so it holds its shape and the liquid is fully taken up.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, butter. 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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