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Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

A simple pasta dish cooked in boiling water and finished with tomato sauce, cheese, butter, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spaghetti

  1. Place a handful of spaghetti in a kettle of boiling salted water.

  2. As it softens, bend and coil it round in the kettle.

  3. Cover and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender.

  4. Drain in a colander.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Return to the kettle with enough tomato sauce to make it moist.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of grated cheese, 1 tablespoon of butter, and a dash of paprika.

  3. Cook slowly until the sauce is mostly absorbed.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Spaghetti
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it its chewy, tender texture.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity that coat the pasta as the sauce reduces.
Grated cheese
Adds salty, savory flavour and helps the sauce cling to the pasta.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the sauce is mostly absorbed. Gentle heat lets the sauce thicken and cling to the spaghetti without scorching the butter and cheese, which can turn grainy or burn on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cheese, butter. 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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