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Macaroni Soup

A creamy macaroni soup made with stock, tomatoes, milk, butter, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break macaroni into small lengths and cook in salted water until done.

  2. Serve the cooked macaroni with well-seasoned stock.

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes until soft enough to strain.

Make the cream soup

  1. Boil the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Cook ⅓ cup of butter and corn starch together.

  3. Add enough hot milk to make the mixture pour easily.

  4. Stir the mixture carefully into the boiling milk.

  5. Boil for ten minutes.

  6. Add the remaining butter, white pepper, and strained tomatoes.

  7. Serve very hot, adding chopped celery if desired.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Corn + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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, giving it substance and bite.
Milk
Provides the creamy base that the thickened mixture is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and cooks with the starch to form a smooth roux.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable soup as it heats.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh tomato flavour that contrasts the creamy milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch mixture into the milk. Corn starch clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Thinning the butter and starch with hot milk first, then stirring gently into boiling milk, lets the starch disperse and thicken smoothly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, milk, butter, corn, white pepper):

  1. Basilfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, milk, butter, corn, white pepper. 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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