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Italian Spaghetti Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with celery, onion, garlic, parsley, olive oil, meat, wine, and seasonings for spaghetti.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Italian Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine celery, onion, garlic, parsley, and olive oil in a pot to cover the bottom.

  2. Simmer slowly until golden brown.

Add meat and tomatoes

  1. Add chopped meat and dark wine.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in tomatoes and Italian tomato sauce.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Cook very slowly for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with spaghetti.

  2. Top with grated cheese.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. 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

Olive oil
Carries the aromatics and browns the vegetables, adding fat and flavor to the base.
Chopped meat
Adds savory, browned richness and body to the sauce.
Dark wine
Adds acidity and depth, helping lift flavors from the browned bits in the pot.
Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing acidity, moisture and body.
Italian tomato sauce
Adds extra tomato body and concentrated flavor to the sauce.
Onion
Provides sweetness and aromatic depth as it browns in the oil.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until golden brown. Browning the onion, celery and garlic in oil builds sweet, deep flavor through caramelization. Rushing this with high heat can scorch the garlic and leave a bitter taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, garlic, parsley, olive, meat, wine, tomato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, garlic, parsley, olive, meat, wine, tomato. 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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