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Spaghetti and Gravy

A canned spaghetti dish served with a butter, flour, and stock gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spaghetti and Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spaghetti

  1. Break the spaghetti into 4‑inch lengths.

  2. Put the spaghetti in a kettle and cover with water.

  3. Add the salt and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Drain the spaghetti well and fill the cans halfway.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pot, then add the flour and water to make a thin paste.

  2. Combine the soup stock, salt, and white pepper with the paste and cook until the gravy thickens.

  3. Cover the spaghetti with the hot gravy.

Process and serve

  1. Process No. 1 cans for 45 minutes at 230 °F (110 °C) and No. 2 cans for 60 minutes at 230 °F (110 °C).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + white peppertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Spaghetti
Forms the bulk of the filling and holds its shape through cooking and processing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy and carries flavor.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Chicken or beef soup stock
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be cooked in the fat and liquid until the gravy thickens so the starch swells and the sauce coats the spaghetti rather than separating or tasting raw and pasty.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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