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Baked Macaroni with Tomato

A baked pasta dish with a tomato-based sauce and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Baked Macaroni with Tomato

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.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the macaroni according to package instructions.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens and boils.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the strained tomatoes, sugar, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the sauce with the cooked macaroni.

  2. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 structure of the dish, holding the sauce in its tubes and shape.
Milk
Provides liquid that, with the flour, thickens into a smooth white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce when cooked briefly with melted butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Strained cooked tomatoes
Supplies the main tomato flavour and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk into the sauce. Milk must be added gradually while stirring constantly, so the starch in the flour swells evenly and the sauce thickens without lumps. It must then come to a boil so the starch fully thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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