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Macaroni a LA Milanaise

A tomato and ham sauce served over boiled macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Macaroni a LA Milanaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, garlic, thyme, and parsley in a stewpan.

  2. Stew for 1 hour.

  3. Press the pulp and juice through a sieve and return to the heat.

  4. Rub butter and flour together in a frying pan until browned but not burned, then remove from heat.

  5. Stir in enough boiling tomato juice to blend the mixture.

  6. Pour the mixture into the stewpan with the tomatoes.

  7. Stir until smooth.

  8. Add the ham.

  9. Boil for about 10 minutes.

Cook the macaroni and serve

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted boiling water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain thoroughly.

  3. Add the macaroni to the sauce.

  4. Let it stew gently for 20 minutes or more, ensuring it absorbs the sauce.

  5. Serve in a deep dish with grated cheese on the side.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the body of the dish and soaks up the sauce as it stews.
Tomatoes
Provide the main sauce base, with acidity and liquid for the stew.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and blended.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour, adding richness and a browned, nutty flavor.
Ham
Adds savory, salty meat flavor to the sauce.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency that mellows during the long stew.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking flour in fat until lightly browned toasts it for flavor and color. If it burns, it turns bitter and loses thickening power, so the sauce tastes harsh and stays thin.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, thyme, parsley, butter, pepper, ham. 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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