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Macaroni and Tomatoes

A simple pasta dish made with macaroni, tomatoes, onion, butter, flour, and seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Macaroni and Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the tomatoes with the chopped onion until hot.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the tomato mixture along with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the macaroni to the sauce and simmer for 25 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tangy flavour of the sauce.
Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs some of the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with the flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when mixed with butter and blended into the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour smooth before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch outside the granules gels before the rest dissolves. Blending it first with butter spreads the starch evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, pepper, cheese. 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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