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
Directions
Make the soup
Boil the macaroni in good stock until tender.
Remove half of the macaroni to a smaller pot.
Add more stock to the larger pot and boil for an additional hour.
Rub the contents of the larger pot through a tamis cloth until thick.
Combine the thick liquid with the macaroni in the smaller pot.
Finish and serve
Stir in the grated Parmesan cheese and heat without boiling.
Serve in a tureen with a toasted French roll.
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
- Naples macaroni
- Forms the body of the soup and thickens it as the starch releases during boiling.
- Boiled cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
- Grated parmesan cheese
- Adds savoury depth and salt, and helps give the soup a creamy body when melted in.
The step that matters
Heat without boiling after adding the Parmesan. Boiling after the cheese goes in can make the proteins tighten and fat separate, leaving the soup grainy and oily rather than smooth.
“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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