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Macaroni Soup

A soup made with macaroni, onion, butter, corn starch, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,205 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the onion in a pint of salted water for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain the onion water.

Cook the macaroni

  1. When the water boils again, add the macaroni and butter.

  2. Boil gently until the macaroni is tender.

  3. Drain the macaroni and spread it out to cool.

Finish the soup

  1. Take the fat from the top of your cold soup and thin it with 1 cup of boiling water.

  2. Strain the mixture into a soup pot.

  3. Heat the soup pot to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface.

  5. Season the soup.

  6. Stir in the corn-starch and cook until thickened.

  7. Add the macaroni back to the soup.

  8. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  9. Serve in a tureen.

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. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides the bulk and chewy body of the soup.
Corn-starch
Thickens the broth as it heats, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Onion
Flavors the water with a mild, sweet aroma.

The step that matters

Stir in the corn-starch and cook until thickened. Starch clumps if dropped into liquid without stirring. Stirring while heating lets the granules swell evenly and thicken the soup, and cooking it fully removes the raw starch taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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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