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Spaghetti with Tomatoes

A baked spaghetti dish with tomato sauce, garlic, olive oil, and flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spaghetti with Tomatoes

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 spaghetti

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add spaghetti and cook for 20 minutes, bending it as it softens.

  3. Drain spaghetti in a colander and set it in a pan of cold water for 10 minutes to bleach.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the tomatoes with minced garlic.

  2. Dissolve flour in olive oil and add to boiling tomatoes, stirring until thickened.

Bake and serve

  1. Oil a covered baking dish and mix the spaghetti with the tomato sauce.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Olive + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Tomato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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, giving it its body and chew.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and acidity that make up the sauce.
Olive oil
Carries fat into the sauce and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Whole-wheat flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the oil and hot tomatoes.
Garlic
Adds aroma and pungent flavour to the tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolve flour in olive oil and add to boiling tomatoes, stirring until thickened.. Adding flour to hot liquid without first blending it into fat can form lumps. Stirring constantly while the sauce boils lets starch granules disperse and swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, olive, garlic, wheat, flour):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, olive, garlic, wheat, 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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