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Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

A pasta dish with tomato sauce, butter, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the tomatoes until well cooked.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and cook the sliced onion until very soft.

  3. Press the cooked onion through a sieve into the tomatoes.

  4. Melt the cheese and add it to the strained tomatoes.

Cook and serve

  1. Meanwhile, boil the spaghetti in a pot of salted water for about 20 minutes or until tender.

  2. Drain the spaghetti and add it to the sauce.

  3. Serve very 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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidity of the sauce once stewed and strained.
Onion
Softened and pressed through a sieve, it adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Softens the onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Eastern cheese
Melts into the strained tomatoes, adding richness and a creamy texture.
Spaghetti
Forms the main starch base that the sauce coats.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until very soft. Onion that is only partly softened stays firm and sharp and will not blend smoothly when pressed through a sieve, leaving lumps and a raw bite in the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, 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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