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Tomatoes and Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with stewed tomatoes, butter, sweet milk, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tomatoes and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling water for about 1 hour until tender, adding more water if necessary.

  2. Transfer the cooked macaroni to a pudding dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the stewed tomatoes over the macaroni.

  2. Add salt, butter, and sweet milk.

  3. If the tomatoes are juicy, sprinkle flour for thickening.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that softens and holds the body of the bake.
Stewed tomatoes
Provide acidity and moisture that flavour the pasta as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the pasta turn creamy in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the released tomato juices so the bake does not turn watery.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding flour when the tomatoes are juicy. Flour thickens liquid only when it is evenly distributed and heated, so sprinkling it over juicy tomatoes lets it bind the released liquid instead of leaving the bake soupy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour. 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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