Name: Italian Consommé
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons macaroni; 3 cups rich consomme; 4 tablespoons mushrooms; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Italian Consommé

Ingredients

2 tablespoons macaroni
3 cups rich consomme
4 tablespoons mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water until tender.
Plunge macaroni into cold water and cut into rings.

Make and serve the soup

Slice mushrooms and sauté them with macaroni in butter.
Heat consommé and add sautéed mushrooms and macaroni.
Serve hot.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Provides the starchy body and bite that the soup's clear broth lacks.
Rich consommé: Forms the clear, savoury liquid base of the soup.
Mushrooms: Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture when sautéed.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavour when used to sauté the mushrooms and macaroni.

“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.