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Italian Spaghetti

A pasta dish of spaghetti topped with a simmered tomato sauce made from salt pork, Italian tomato sauce, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Italian Spaghetti

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine salt pork, tomato sauce, thick part of tomatoes, and boiling water.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add chopped parsley, red pepper, and salt during cooking.

Serve

  1. Cook spaghetti until tender, then drain.

  2. Serve the sauce over the spaghetti and top with grated Parmesan 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

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

  5. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 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

Salt pork
Renders fat into the sauce, adding savory, rich flavor.
Tomatoes
Form the body and bright acidity of the sauce.
Tomato sauce
Adds liquid and concentrated tomato flavor to the simmered sauce.
Spaghetti
Provides the starchy base that the sauce clings to.
Grated parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savory depth as a finishing topping.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. A long, gentle simmer lets the sauce reduce and thicken while flavors blend. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot, which would make the sauce taste burnt.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, tomato, sauce, pepper, parmesan cheese):

  1. Basilfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, tomato, sauce, pepper, parmesan 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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