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 Sour
Ingredients
Directions
Make the macaroni purée
Boil the macaroni in good stock until tender.
Set aside one third of the macaroni in a small soup pot.
Add more stock to the remaining macaroni and boil for an additional hour.
Rub the thickened macaroni through a tammy (fine sieve).
If too thick, add boiled cream and rub through again.
Finish the soup
Combine with the macaroni in the soup pot and stir well.
Grate in the Parmesan cheese and ensure the mixture is hot.
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
- Neapolitan macaroni
- Forms the body of the soup once boiled and pressed into a purée.
- Cream
- Adds richness and smoothness, loosening the purée when it is too thick.
- Parmesan cheese
- Adds savoury, salty flavour and body as it melts into the hot soup.
The step that matters
Rubbing the thickened macaroni through a tammy. Pressing the cooked pasta through a fine sieve breaks it down into a smooth purée. If it is too thick, adding cream before a second pass keeps the texture silky rather than pasty.
“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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