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Brown Macaroni Soup

A soup made with browned onion, carrot, peppercorns, cornflour, bone stock, and macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the vegetables

  1. Fry the sliced onion or leek, carrot, and peppercorns in butter until brown but not burnt.

  2. Sprinkle cornflour over the vegetables.

  3. Stir the mixture until it turns brown.

Make the soup

  1. Pour boiling bone stock over the mixture.

  2. Stir until the stock boils.

  3. Let the soup simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Burn a little sugar in a spoon.

  5. Stir the sugar into the soup.

  6. Sprinkle sugar over the vegetables while frying for quicker browning.

Strain and add macaroni

  1. Rub the soup through a wire sieve.

  2. Return the strained soup to the saucepan.

  3. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the macaroni.

  5. Cut the macaroni into 1-inch pieces.

  6. Add the macaroni to the soup.

  7. Simmer the soup with macaroni for 15 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Season the soup with salt and pepper if necessary.

  2. Pour the soup into a hot tureen.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the frying and helps the vegetables brown, adding richness and flavour.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Bone stock
Forms the liquid base, adding savoury depth and body to the soup.
Onion or leek
Softens and browns, adding sweet, savoury flavour to the base.
Carrot
Browns and adds natural sweetness and colour to the base.
Macaroni
Adds starch and bulk, making the soup more substantial.

The step that matters

Brown the vegetables until brown but not burnt. Browning builds deep, roasted flavour through Maillard reactions and caramelisation. Once the sugars and solids scorch, they turn bitter and can spoil the flavour and colour of the whole soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, sugar, pepper. 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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