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Macaroni Soup

A simple soup of macaroni, butter, onion, garlic, and clear gravy, topped with Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,901 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Bring a pan of water to a rapid boil.

  2. Add the macaroni, butter, onion, and cloves to the boiling water.

  3. Cook until the macaroni swells and becomes tender, then drain well.

  4. Cut the drained macaroni into half-inch lengths.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the macaroni to 2 quarts of clear gravy-soup and let it simmer for a few minutes.

  2. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese.

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. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the soup and gives it a tender, chewy bite.
Butter
Adds fat, richness, and a smooth flavor to the cooking water.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it cooks with the pasta.

The step that matters

Drain the macaroni when tender. Pasta keeps softening in hot liquid, so draining it once tender but not overcooked stops it turning mushy when it simmers in the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion. 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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