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Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup

A beef broth soup with macaroni or vermicelli, seasoned with salt, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaf, celery root, and mixed herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni or vermicelli in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni or vermicelli.

  3. Pour cold water over the drained macaroni or vermicelli.

  4. Lay the sticks close together and cut them into 1-inch pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Add the cut pieces to a plain soup stock.

  2. Combine beef, bones, water, salt, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaf, celery root, and mixed herbs in a pot to make the bouillon.

  3. Boil the bouillon down to 2 quarts.

  4. Remove the fat from the bouillon.

  5. Clarify the broth.

  6. Add more seasoning 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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef from the round
Supplies meat flavor and savory body to the broth as it simmers.
Bones
Release gelatin and body into the broth, giving it a fuller mouthfeel.
Macaroni or vermicelli
Adds starchy pieces that soften in the soup and give it substance.
Celery root
Adds a mild, earthy aroma that rounds out the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Clarify the broth. Clarifying removes cloudy suspended particles so the broth turns clear. Fat and proteins must be separated gently, because hard boiling breaks them up and makes the broth cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery. 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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