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Tomato Cheese and Macaroni

A simple macaroni dish with tomato sauce, cheese, onion, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Cheese and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan until it is brown.

  2. Add the finely chopped onion and brown it in the butter.

  3. Slowly add the flour and tomato, stirring continuously.

  4. Add the grated cheese and stir until melted.

Finish

  1. Mix in the cooked macaroni and season with salt and pepper.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns with the onion and forms the base of the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Combined with the butter to form a roux that thickens the tomato into a smooth sauce.
Tomato
Supplies the liquid and acidity that make up the body of the sauce.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to add richness and a creamy, savoury flavour.
Cooked macaroni
Provides the starchy bulk that the sauce coats.

The step that matters

Slowly add the flour and tomato, stirring continuously. Adding liquid to a hot roux gradually while stirring keeps starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cheese, onion, butter, flour. 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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