Name: Puttanesca Sauce Over Spaghetti
Ingredients: ¼ Cup extra virgin olive oil; 3 cloves garlic, minced; 35 Ounce can Italian plum tomatoes (reserve Juice), roughly chopped; 1 Tablespoon capers, well rinsed; ⅔ Cup oil cured black olives, pitted and roughly chopped; ½ Teaspoon hot red pepper flakes; 1 Teaspoon dried basil; 1 Teaspoon dried oregano; 1 Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 1 Teaspoon salt; 1 Pound spaghetti; 2 Tablespoons minced flat leaf parsley, leaves stripped from stems

Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

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.

Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tomato + basiltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,979 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic: Turns pale gold in the warm oil, flavouring the oil for the whole sauce.
Plum tomatoes: Form the body of the sauce and provide moisture and acidity as they simmer.
Black olives: Add salty, savoury depth and a meaty texture to the sauce.
Capers: Add briny, acidic bursts of flavour that brighten the sauce.
Spaghetti: Carries the sauce, with its starch helping the sauce cling to the strands.

The step that matters

Garlic in the hot oil. Garlic turns bitter if it browns too far, and the oil is only heated by residual warmth after removal from heat. Watch the colour closely so it reaches pale gold and no further.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, clove, garlic, tomato, capers, pepper, basil):

Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Lemonfits better
Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, clove, garlic, tomato, capers, pepper, basil. 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.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Olive Oil	1 tbsp (14g)	119
Plum	1 medium (66g)	30
Tomato	1 medium (123g)	22
Chili	1 tsp (2.7g)	8
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Oregano	1 tsp dried (1.8g)	5
Garlic	1 clove (3g)	4
Olive	1 large (4g)	4
Capers	1 tbsp (9g) drained	2
Basil	5 leaves fresh (2.5g)	1
Parsley	1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)	1
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

Puttanesca Sauce Over Spaghetti