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Savoury Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with tomatoes, gravy, onion, breadcrumbs, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Savoury Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold boiled macaroni into convenient lengths and place in a basin.

  2. Skin and roughly chop the tomatoes, then add to the macaroni.

  3. Add strong gravy or meat extract, pepper, salt, chopped onion, bread crumbs, and lemon zest.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture into a well-buttered bag and cook 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a firm, substantial body.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and a bright, acidic flavour that cuts through the starch.
Strong gravy or meat extract
Adds concentrated savoury depth that carries the flavour of the whole dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid from the tomatoes and help the mixture hold together and set.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury background as it cooks.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, meat, pepper, onion, bread, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, meat, pepper, onion, bread, butter. 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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