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Macaroni a LA Tomate

A macaroni dish cooked with tomato puree, butter, ham, and seasoned, served hot with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,398 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni a LA Tomate

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Slice the tomatoes and cook them in butter until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked tomatoes through a fine sieve and season to taste.

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender, then strain and rinse with cold water.

  2. Cut the macaroni into one-inch lengths.

Combine and serve

  1. Shred the ham and add it along with the macaroni to the tomato puree.

  2. Heat the mixture through and serve in an au gratin dish, garnished with parsley.

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

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Break down into a smooth puree that forms the sauce base and provides acidity.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the tomatoes as they cook.
Macaroni
Provides the starchy body of the dish once boiled until tender.
Cooked ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomatoes until tender. Tomatoes must be cooked fully soft before sieving, because under-cooked pieces stay firm and will not pass smoothly through the sieve to form a uniform puree.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, parsley. 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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