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Spaghetti with Tomatoes

A pasta dish of spaghetti simmered in a tomato sauce with garlic and olive oil.

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

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

Make the sauce

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

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

Bake and serve

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

  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 and absorbs the sauce as it bakes.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that make up the sauce.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and fat, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Garlic
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the tomato sauce.
Whole-wheat flour
Thickens the tomato sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Dissolve the flour in the olive oil before adding it to the boiling tomatoes, stirring until thickened.. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch coats the outside of each particle before it can hydrate. Dissolving it in fat first separates the particles, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

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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