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Macaroni Soup

A vegetable and meat stock soup with macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Prepare enough meat stock for the desired quantity of soup.

  2. Add turnip, carrots, leeks, onions, cloves, mace, and peppercorns to the boiling stock.

  3. Simmer gently for 2.5 hours, occasionally lifting the lid to release steam.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Wash the macaroni in several waters.

  2. Place the macaroni in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.

  3. Add a little salt to the saucepan.

  4. Boil the macaroni until tender, about 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the macaroni, rinse with cold water, and cut it into small pieces.

Serve

  1. Place the macaroni in a soup tureen.

  2. Strain the hot soup over the macaroni in the 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the body of the soup as starchy, bite-sized pieces that soften in the broth.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the stock during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the stock, and soften during the long simmer.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the stock as it softens during simmering.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness into the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer the stock gently. A gentle simmer extracts flavor from the vegetables and spices without clouding the stock. A hard boil breaks up the vegetables and makes the soup cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, carrot, leek, onion, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, carrot, leek, onion, clove. 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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