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Macaroni. Macaroni, Italian Style.

A baked macaroni dish with tomato sauce, onions, garlic, green pepper, and grated cheese.

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 ↓

Macaroni. Macaroni, Italian Style.

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Place a saucepan with 3 quarts of water over high heat and add 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. When the water boils, add ½ pound of broken macaroni and stir for a few minutes.

  3. Cover and cook until the macaroni is soft, about 1 hour, then drain in a colander.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In another saucepan, cook 2 tablespoons of finely chopped onion and 1 tablespoon of butter for 3 minutes.

  2. Add a small piece of bruised garlic, ½ chopped green pepper, ½ can of tomatoes, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, and 1 teaspoon sugar.

  3. Cover and cook for 15 minutes, then drain the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the macaroni and tomato dressing alternately in a dish, top with grated cheese, and brown in the oven.

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. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. 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

Macaroni
Forms the starchy body of the dish, giving it bulk and a soft, pasta-based texture.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and acidity, forming the sauce that moistens the layers.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps soften the onion and pepper in the sauce.
Grated cheese
Melts over the top and browns in the oven, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Drain the macaroni until soft, then layer it. Macaroni cooked fully soft but not overcooked holds its shape when layered with sauce. Draining well keeps excess water from thinning the sauce and making the dish soggy when baked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, garlic, pepper, sugar, cheese):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, garlic, pepper, sugar, cheese. 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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