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Italian Macaroni

A macaroni dish with a steak and tomato gravy, seasoned with garlic, onions, mushrooms, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Italian Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Cut all fat from the steak and brown it in the butter.

  2. Place the browned steak in a pot and boil until it falls apart.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the tomatoes, remaining butter, chopped onions, garlic, meat, and mushrooms to the pot.

  2. Season with sage, cayenne, black pepper, red pepper, and salt, then let it cook until thick.

Cook the macaroni

  1. About an hour before serving, cook the macaroni in salted boiling water until tender, then drain.

Layer and serve

  1. On hot dishes, layer macaroni, gravy, and grated cheese.

  2. Repeat the layers as desired.

  3. Serve with light bread, Tabasco sauce, wine, and strong coffee.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meat that breaks down into the rich, chunky body of the gravy.
Tomatoes
Form the acidic, liquid base of the gravy and thicken as they cook down.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the steak and enriching the gravy.
Dried mushrooms
Add concentrated savory, earthy flavor to the gravy.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the gravy.
Macaroni
Provides the starchy base that holds the layers together.

The step that matters

Browning the steak in butter. Browning creates flavor through the Maillard reaction. Steak that is crowded or wet will steam instead, leaving the gravy flat-tasting.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, garlic, onion, mushroom, cheese, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, garlic, onion, mushroom, cheese, 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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