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Italian Spaghetti

A baked spaghetti dish with bacon, onion, hamburger steak, chili powder, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Italian Spaghetti

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Fry the bacon in a pan until slightly browned.

  2. Add the onion and fry until softened.

  3. Add the hamburger steak and cook until thoroughly browned.

Combine and bake

  1. Boil the spaghetti according to package instructions, then drain.

  2. Mix the cooked bacon, onion, hamburger, and spaghetti together. Season to taste.

  3. Pour the can of tomatoes over the mixture.

  4. Cover and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat that cooks the onion and meat, and adds savory, smoky flavor.
Hamburger steak
Provides the main meaty body and browned flavor of the sauce.
Spaghetti
Forms the starchy base that absorbs the sauce and holds the dish together.
Tomatoes
Supply moisture and acidity that build the sauce during long baking.
Chili powder
Adds warm spice and depth to the meat and tomato mixture.

The step that matters

Thoroughly brown the hamburger steak. Browning meat through the Maillard reaction creates deep savory flavor. Pale, steamed meat stays grey and bland, and that flavor carries into the baked sauce.

“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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