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Macaroni a LA Milanese

A macaroni dish with tomato sauce, butter, milk, flour, cheese, and cream, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni a LA Milanese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Cook tomatoes and onion together until tender.

  2. Sieve the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Add the flour.

  2. Stir in the milk to make a sauce.

  3. Season the sauce.

  4. Add the tomato purée, grated cheese, and cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a pan, combine the macaroni with most of the sauce. Heat thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into an au gratin dish.

  3. Coat with the remaining sauce.

  4. Garnish 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a firm, chewy bite under the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury richness and helps the sauce melt and cling to the pasta.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and fruity flavour, and moisture for the tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the roux. Adding the milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Adding it all at once can leave lumps that are hard to remove once the sauce thickens.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, butter, milk, flour, cheese, cream. 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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