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Macaroni with Tomato

A simple pasta dish of boiled macaroni mixed with hot tomato sauce and grated Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,490 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni with Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Plunge macaroni into cold water and drain.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix hot tomato sauce with macaroni.

  2. Add grated Parmesan cheese and mix carefully.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + parmesan cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and holds the tomato sauce.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and tangy flavor that coats the pasta.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savory flavor and helps the sauce cling to the pasta.

The step that matters

Plunge macaroni into cold water and drain. Cold water stops the pasta from cooking further, so it does not turn soft or mushy after the long boil. Draining well keeps excess water from thinning the tomato sauce when the two are mixed.

“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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