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Italian Tomato Sauce— "shell" Macaroni

A macaroni dish topped with a slow‑cooked tomato sauce made from beef pot roast, tomatoes, herbs, and optional garlic and chili.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Italian Tomato Sauce— "shell" Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the beef pot roast in lard or butter, without adding water.

  2. Add the can of tomatoes, chopped mint, parsley, onion, garlic, and chili if desired.

  3. Cook slowly for a long time, adding a little water if too rich.

Assemble

  1. Boil the macaroni in water until cooked, then strain through a colander.

  2. Layer hot macaroni, grated cheese, and tomato sauce in a baking pan or casserole until filled.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Mint + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef pot roast
Browned and slowly simmered, it gives the sauce its meaty body and savory depth.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid base and acidity that make up the bulk of the sauce.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy body of the dish, absorbing sauce and holding the layers together.
Grated cheese
Melts into the hot macaroni and sauce, adding richness and binding the layers.
Onion
Softens during slow cooking and adds sweetness to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for a long time. Long, gentle simmering lets the beef and vegetables break down and the sauce thicken and concentrate. Too rich a sauce can be loosened with a little water, since the reduction can become heavy and scorch if the heat is too high.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, tomato, mint, parsley, onion, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, tomato, mint, parsley, onion, garlic. 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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