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Minnesota Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

A pasta dish made with Minnesota brand spaghetti and a tomato sauce seasoned with onion, garlic, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Minnesota Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spaghetti

  1. Break the spaghetti into boiling water.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes until tender.

  3. Strain the spaghetti and cover with cold water.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Heat brown butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the spaghetti and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Boil tomatoes, onion, garlic, cloves, allspice, peppers, and baking soda.

  4. Strain the sauce through cheesecloth.

  5. Thicken with potato flour dissolved in cold water.

  6. Add butter.

  7. Season with salt and red pepper.

  8. Boil for 5 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the tomato sauce over the spaghetti.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 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

Minnesota spaghetti
Forms the bulk of the dish, softening as it boils until tender.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Potato flour
Thickens the strained sauce as it dissolves and heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a nutty flavour when browned, and rounds out the sauce.
Baking soda
Raises the sauce's pH, softening the tomatoes and mellowing their acidity.

The step that matters

Thicken with potato flour dissolved in cold water. Starch must be dispersed in cold water first so it does not clump, then heated so the granules swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, onion, clove, garlic, pepper, potato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, onion, clove, garlic, pepper, potato. 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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