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Boiled Macaroni

A simple boiled macaroni dish, optionally flavored with onions, tomatoes, stock, herbs, and a butter or dripping sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Wipe the macaroni and break it into convenient lengths.

  2. Put it into a pot of boiling salted water, using ten times as much water as macaroni.

  3. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes until tender, ensuring it does not burst or become mushy.

  4. Drain immediately and season with butter or dripping.

Make the optional flavorings

  1. For onion flavor, boil two onions with each pound of macaroni.

  2. For tomato sauce, combine half a can of tomatoes, half a pint of stock, thyme, parsley, cloves, sliced onion, cayenne pepper, and salt in a pot.

  3. Cover and simmer for one hour, stirring frequently, then drain and press through a sieve.

  4. Mix two ounces of dripping or butter with one ounce of flour over heat until smooth, then stir into the tomato mixture and pour over the macaroni.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the main starchy body of the dish, cooking to a tender bite in boiling water.
Butter or dripping
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty coating that carries flavor over the cooked pasta.
Flour
Thickens the butter-based mixture so the tomato sauce becomes smooth and coats the macaroni.

The step that matters

Boiling the macaroni. Pasta keeps cooking after it leaves the water, and boiling too long makes starch break down, so it bursts and turns mushy. Drain it promptly once tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, thyme, parsley, clove, pepper, 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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