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Macaroni Soup

A creamy macaroni soup with butter, mace, cream, cornflour, and pounded almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Wash the macaroni and soak it in warm water for about an hour.

  2. Drain the macaroni and place it in a saucepan with the milk, butter, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cook until the macaroni is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the cream with the cornflour.

  2. Stir the cream mixture into the soup until it thickens.

  3. Add the pounded almonds and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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
Forms the body of the soup and becomes tender as it cooks in the milk.
Milk
Makes up the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the cream and milk mixture as it heats.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture.
Pounded almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornflour mixture. Cornflour must be mixed smoothly into cold cream before it is stirred into hot soup, otherwise it forms lumps. Stirring while the soup heats lets the starch swell and thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, cream, almond):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, cream, almond. 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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