Skip to main content
Main

Zitellis Macaroni Stew

A tomato and bacon stew with macaroni, onions, parsley, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Zitellis Macaroni Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in plenty of salted water until soft.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine tomatoes, water, bacon, onion, and parsley; boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add butter and season with pepper and salt; boil for 5 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a tureen, layer macaroni and grated cheese, then pour sauce over each layer until all ingredients are used.

  2. Serve in deep plates as a soup, with any remaining sauce poured on top.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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 soaks up the sauce as a starchy base.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and liquid of the sauce.
Grated cheese
Melts into the layers, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Fat bacon
Renders fat and savoury flavour into the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded richness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Passing the sauce through a colander. Straining removes the solid pieces of onion, parsley and bacon so the sauce becomes smooth. Pressing too hard can force through bits that cloud the texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, parsley, butter, pepper, cheese):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, butter, pepper, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes