Name: Macaroni Soup
Ingredients: beef stock; macaroni; salt; Parmesan cheese

Why it works: Beef and parmesan cheese work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

beef stock
macaroni
salt
Parmesan cheese

Directions

Make a rich beef stock, flavored to your preference.
Parboil the macaroni in boiling salted water for about 20 minutes until tender.
Cut the macaroni into small pieces several inches long.
Add the macaroni to the boiling soup and let it cook for a few minutes before serving.
Serve grated Parmesan cheese on a plate alongside the soup.

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.

Beef + parmesan cheesetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together726 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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