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Macaroni— Italian Fashion

A macaroni dish cooked with butter, tomato, garlic, onion, and beef extract, served with grated parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Macaroni— Italian Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break macaroni into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Boil in water for 20 minutes, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Cover with stock and cook for another 20 minutes until evaporated.

  2. Add butter, tomato, garlic, onion, and beef extract to the macaroni.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a heated platter with grated parmesan cheese.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

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

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 gives it its main body and bite.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Tomato
Provides moisture and acidity, forming the body of the sauce.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency that mellows during simmering.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens into the sauce.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated savoury, meaty depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover with stock and cook until evaporated. Pasta absorbs liquid as it cooks, so the stock must reduce fully without scorching. Covered simmering at low heat keeps the pieces tender while the liquid evaporates evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, garlic, onion, beef, parmesan cheese):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, garlic, onion, beef, parmesan 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.

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