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Macaroni Soup, Neapolitan Mode

A creamy Neapolitan-style macaroni soup with roux, cream, Parmesan, egg yolks, and seasonings, served with quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup, Neapolitan Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a medium saucepan.

  2. Add enough fine flour to make a light roux.

  3. Cook the roux over low heat for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in enough cream to form a soft paste.

  5. Dry the paste over low heat for 10 minutes.

  6. Mix in 2 ounces of grated Parmesan, 6 egg yolks, a little poultry glaze, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and essence of spinach.

  7. Poach a small piece to test firmness.

  8. Adjust the mixture with consomme or an egg yolk as needed.

Shape and poach

  1. Mold the mixture into quenelles using teaspoons.

  2. Place the quenelles in a buttered sauté plate.

  3. Poach the quenelles in boiling stock for 12-15 minutes before serving.

  4. Drain the quenelles on a napkin.

Serve

  1. Serve the quenelles in a tureen with the prepared soup, omitting the macaroni 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. Nutmeg + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the roux and gives the paste a rich, savory flavor.
Fine flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the paste body and holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the paste and set when poached, giving the quenelles structure and richness.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the quenelles brown and season the paste.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness so the paste can be shaped.

The step that matters

Poach a small piece to test firmness. Egg yolks set when heated, so a paste that is too wet will fall apart in the stock and one that is too dry will be tough. A test piece shows whether the consistency needs adjusting before the whole batch is shaped and poached.

“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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