Why it works: Cream and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,566 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓
Maccaroni Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the soup
Boil the macaroni in the white stock until tender.
Remove half of the macaroni and keep the other half boiling until it reduces to a pulp.
Add enough stock to the pulp to make a total of five pints.
Stir in the cream and heat without boiling.
Grate the Parmesan cheese and add the reserved macaroni.
Serve
Serve with toast.
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.
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Cream + parmesan cheesetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,566 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Macaroni (in the method)
- Cooks down to a pulp that thickens the soup and gives it body.
- White stock
- Forms the liquid base that carries the macaroni and sets the soup's flavour.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
- Parmesan cheese
- Adds savoury, salty depth and a nutty aroma to the soup.
The step that matters
Heat the cream without boiling. Boiling dairy can cause it to separate and turn grainy, so the cream should be heated gently until hot and kept just below a simmer.
“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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