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Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup

A beef broth soup with macaroni or vermicelli, seasoned with cloves, bay leaf, herbs, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bouillon

  1. For the bouillon, combine beef, cloves, bones, bay leaf, water, celery root, salt, mixed herbs, and peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Boil down to 2 quarts, then remove the fat and clarify the broth.

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni or vermicelli in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain and pour cold water over it, then lay the sticks close together.

  3. Cut into 1-inch pieces and add to a plain soup stock.

Finish

  1. Add more seasoning 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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef from the round
Gives the bouillon its meaty flavor and body as it simmers.
Bones
Release gelatin and collagen into the broth, adding body and richness.
Celery root
Adds a savory, aromatic vegetable flavor to the stock.
Macaroni or vermicelli
Provides the starchy pasta pieces that give the soup its substance.

The step that matters

Boil down to 2 quarts, then remove the fat and clarify the broth. Reducing concentrates flavor, but skimming fat and clarifying removes proteins and fat particles that would otherwise leave the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery. 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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