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Macaroni Soup

A soup of macaroni cooked in stock with onion, mace, white pepper, parmesan cheese, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil macaroni in stock until tender.

  2. Remove 1 pint of macaroni.

  3. Cut the macaroni into half-inch pieces and set aside.

Make the soup

  1. Add onion, mace, and white pepper to the stock and macaroni.

  2. Stew until the macaroni can be pulped through a sieve.

  3. Stir in the cut macaroni and grated parmesan cheese.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish

  1. Heat cream until scalding hot.

  2. Add the cream to the soup before serving.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Onion + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,717 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides the body of the soup, as its starch thickens the stock when pulped.
Stock
Forms the flavourful liquid base that carries every other ingredient.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth and body as it melts into the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded texture to the finished soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness that builds the soup's background flavour.

The step that matters

Add the cream to the soup before serving. Cream is heated separately so it is hot but not boiled. Boiling cream for long, or adding it to a very hot soup, can cause it to separate or turn grainy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mace, parmesan cheese, pepper, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mace, parmesan cheese, pepper, cream. 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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