Name: Maccaroni Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts beef soup; ½ pound maccaroni; 1 tablespoon butter; grated cheese

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 ↓

Maccaroni Soup

Ingredients

2 quarts beef soup
½ pound maccaroni
1 tablespoon butter
grated cheese

Directions

Prepare

Make beef soup without vegetables and strain it through a sieve.
Boil the macaroni in water until tender, adding butter.
Drain the macaroni and cut it into small pieces.

Finish and serve

Add the macaroni to the soup and boil together for 10 minutes.
Grate cheese over the soup 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.

Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,193 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Maccaroni: Provides the starchy body that thickens the soup and gives it a substantial bite.
Beef soup: Forms the savory liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole dish.
Grated cheese: Adds salty, rich flavor and a melting finish on the hot soup.

“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.