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 ↓
Macaroni Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the soup
Boil the macaroni in the stock until tender.
Remove half of the macaroni and set aside.
In the same pot, add more stock and boil until you can pulp the macaroni through a fine sieve.
Combine the pulped macaroni, the two stocks, and hot cream.
Add the reserved macaroni and grated Parmesan cheese, heating gently without boiling.
Serve
Serve with crusts of French roll cut into shilling-sized pieces.
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
- Starch that thickens the soup when pulped through a sieve, giving body.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
- Parmesan cheese
- Adds savory, salty flavor and body as it melts into the hot soup.
The step that matters
Heating gently without boiling. Once cream and cheese are in, boiling can cause the dairy to separate or curdle, leaving the soup grainy instead of smooth.
“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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