Name: Macaroni Soup
Ingredients: 1 lb macaroni; 1 quart good stock; 1 pint cream; ½ lb grated Parmesan cheese

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

1 lb macaroni
1 quart good stock
1 pint cream
½ lb grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Cook the macaroni

Boil the macaroni in the stock until tender.
Remove half of the macaroni.
Place the removed macaroni in another pot.
Add more stock to the remaining macaroni.
Boil until you can strain it through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

Combine the two liquids.
Add the cream.
Heat the macaroni that was set aside.
Stir in the grated cheese until 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.

Cream + parmesan cheesetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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 from the pasta thickens the broth and gives the soup body.
Stock: Forms the cooking liquid and provides the main savoury base flavour.
Cream: Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Parmesan cheese: Melts into the soup, adding savoury flavour and a thicker texture.

“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.