Name: Maccaroni and Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pound macaroni; salt; tomato sauce

Why it works: Tomato and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,469 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Maccaroni and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

½ pound macaroni
salt
tomato sauce

Directions

Prepare

Cut the macaroni into four-inch pieces.

Cook and serve

Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.
Drain the macaroni and arrange it neatly on a hot dish.
Pour tomato sauce over the macaroni and serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together5,469 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Forms the base of the dish and becomes tender when boiled in salted water.
Tomato sauce: Adds moisture and acidity, coating the cooked pasta as it is poured over.

“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.