Name: Veal Soup with Macaroni
Ingredients: 3 pounds veal (knuckle or scrag), bones broken and meat cut off; 3 quarts water; ¼ pound macaroni; Butter, to taste; Salt, to taste

Why it works: Veal and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,381 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Veal Soup with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Boil the veal in the water for at least 3 hours until it is reduced to shreds.
Strain the meat from the soup and season to taste.

Cook the macaroni

In a separate pot, cook the macaroni, broken into 1-inch pieces, in water until tender.
Add a little butter to the macaroni once it is done.

Combine and serve

Add the macaroni and the water it was cooked in to the soup.
Let it boil once, then 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.

Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,381 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal: Long simmering breaks down connective tissue and bones, giving the broth body and rich flavor.
Macaroni: Starch thickens the soup slightly and gives it a substantial, filling texture.
Butter: Adds fat and a mellow richness to the cooked macaroni.

“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.