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Easy Weeknight Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Weeknights are always challenging when it comes to making quick dinners that taste like you actually put some effort into them. This 30 minute meal is the perfect solution! This meat sauce recipe tastes like it took hours to make, but it comes together in 30 minutes.

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 15 ingredients
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Easy Weeknight Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Why it works: Onion and garlic 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 ↓

Easy Weeknight Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Serves 4
Prep10 min
Cook20 min

Ingredients

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

577Calories
39 gProtein
37 gFat
22 gCarbs

Counts 13 of 14 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 13 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Beef100g cooked250
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Parmesan Cheese1 oz (28g)110
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Tomato1 medium (123g)22
Chili1 tsp (2.7g)8
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Garlic1 clove (3g)4
Thyme1 tsp dried (1.4g)4
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Olive + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, beef, pepper, onion, garlic, sauce, thyme):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, beef, pepper, onion, garlic, sauce, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.