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Macaroni Soup

A hearty soup of veal shank and macaroni, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional butter, cheese, milk, flour, and curry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cook the veal in cold water until it falls apart.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Use as little water as possible.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Cook the macaroni in salted water until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Add a little butter.

  3. Stir in the macaroni.

  4. Serve with grated cheese on the side.

  5. Serve.

  6. Use boiling milk thickened with butter and flour instead of veal broth.

  7. Flavor with curry powder.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal shank
Cooks down in water to give the soup its meaty, savory base.
Macaroni
Adds body and starch, giving the soup a substantial, filling texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the optional milk base as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Cook the veal until it falls apart. Collagen in the shank must break down slowly in gentle, moist heat to turn into gelatin. If the pot boils hard or the cooking is cut short, the meat stays tough and the broth tastes thin.

“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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