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Italian Spaghetti

A pasta dish of spaghetti topped with a tomato, beef, onion, garlic, and mushroom sauce, finished with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Soak the dried mushrooms in 2 cups of cold water and bring to a simmer.

Make the sauce

  1. In a large pot, heat the olive oil and butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and garlic, and sauté until soft.

  3. Add the lean beef and cook until browned.

  4. Stir in the tomatoes and soaked mushrooms, and season with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

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

  2. Combine the spaghetti with the sauce and mix well.

  3. Serve topped 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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meaty body of the sauce and savory browned flavor when seared.
Dried mushrooms
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the sauce, especially from their soaking liquid.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the flavor base of the sauce.
Tomatoes
Supply acidity, moisture and body that make up the bulk of the sauce.
Olive oil
Carries fat-soluble flavors and helps onions and beef brown in the pot.

The step that matters

Browning the beef. Searing beef over medium heat until browned triggers the Maillard reaction, building deep savory flavor. Crowding the pan or stopping early leaves the meat grey and the sauce flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, garlic, mushroom, beef, olive, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, garlic, mushroom, beef, olive, butter, pepper. 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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