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Macaroni, with Tomato-sauce

A baked macaroni dish layered with a tomato sauce made from butter, onion, celery, parsley, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni, with Tomato-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion, celery, and parsley; cook slowly until the onion is brown.

  3. Add the tomatoes and boil for 1 hour, then strain through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan.

  4. Cook the strained sauce until thick like ketchup; season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  5. Keep the sauce gently simmering while cooking the macaroni.

Cook and bake

  1. In boiling salted water, cook the macaroni for 20 minutes, then drain in a colander.

  2. In a hot dish, layer macaroni, then tomato sauce, repeating until all is used, finishing with sauce on top.

  3. Set in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes, then serve very hot.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, rounded flavour.
Onion
Browning slowly builds sweetness and depth in the base of the sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide the acidity and body that form the main sauce once reduced.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that holds the layers of sauce together.

The step that matters

Cook the strained sauce until thick like ketchup. Tomato sauce that is still watery will thin the pasta and pool in the dish. Reducing it concentrates the flavour and gives it enough body to coat each piece of macaroni.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, parsley, tomato, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, parsley, tomato, 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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