Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup

A vegetable broth with soup bones, carrots, onions, turnips, and macaroni or vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place soup bones in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and add the chopped vegetables.

  3. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander and return it to the saucepan to reheat.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the macaroni until tender.

  2. If using vermicelli, soak it briefly instead of boiling.

  3. Place the cooked macaroni in a soup tureen.

  4. Pour the hot soup over the macaroni just 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni or vermicelli
Provides the starchy body that soaks up the broth and gives the soup its substance.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory depth into the broth as they simmer for hours.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.
Turnips
Contribute mild earthy flavor and some body to the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after the first boil. Foam carries impurities and proteins that can cloud the broth and taste bitter. Removing it early keeps the soup clear and clean-flavored over the long simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, 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.

More macaroni soup recipes

Tomato 8Veal 5 See all 191 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes