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Baked Spaghetti

A baked pasta dish with white sauce, stewed tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Spaghetti

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spaghetti

  1. Boil salted water and add spaghetti. Cook for 20 minutes or until soft.

  2. Drain spaghetti and rinse with cold water to prevent it from becoming pasty.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer spaghetti, then add 2-3 tablespoons of white sauce.

  2. Add 2-3 tablespoons of stewed tomatoes and repeat layers until the dish is filled.

  3. Top with ½ cup of grated Parmesan cheese.

  4. Bake in the oven until the cheese is well browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 holds the layers together when cooked until soft.
Hot milk
Forms the base of the white sauce, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce with fat for a smooth, rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a white sauce.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Rinse the spaghetti after draining. Rinsing with cold water washes off surface starch that would otherwise make the pasta gummy and pasty once layered and baked.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, parmesan cheese. 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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