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Olive Harper

Macaroni cooked in beef soup, seasoned with salt, topped with cheese and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Olive Harper

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Cook the macaroni in the beef soup for 15 minutes over gentle heat.

  2. Add the salt and stir.

Serve

  1. Transfer the macaroni to a serving dish.

  2. Sprinkle grated cheese generously over the macaroni.

  3. Pour the tomato sauce over the entire dish and serve immediately.

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. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  3. Beef + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs flavour from the broth as it cooks.
Clear beef soup
Cooks the pasta and gives it savoury, beefy flavour.
Grated cheese
Melts over the hot pasta, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and a tangy, rounded flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook the macaroni in the beef soup over gentle heat. Gentle heat lets the pasta cook through and absorb liquid evenly. Vigorous boiling can break the pasta apart and cook the outside faster than the inside, leaving it unevenly textured.

“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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