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Macaroni in Spanish Style

A macaroni dish cooked with mutton, lamb, or chicken gravy, tomato, green pepper, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni in Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water until clear.

  2. Drain and rinse in cold water mixed with vinegar.

  3. Lay the macaroni on a board in parallel rows and cut into 5-inch pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, heat the gravy.

  2. Add onion, strained tomato, green pepper, sugar, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the macaroni.

  4. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour into a hot dish rubbed with garlic.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  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 bulk of the dish and gives it its chewy, starchy body.
Gravy
Supplies the savoury meat base and moisture that carries the other flavours.
Strained tomato
Adds acidity and body to the sauce, giving it a tangy, rounded flavour.
Green pepper
Contributes a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable note that balances the richness.
Sugar
Rounds off the acidity of the tomato and balances the seasoning.

The step that matters

Simmering the macaroni in the sauce. Simmering slowly for the full 30 minutes lets the pasta absorb the gravy and tomato evenly. Too fast a boil can scorch the bottom and break the pieces apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mutton, tomato, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mutton, tomato, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, clove. 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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