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Tomato Spaghetti

A simple spaghetti dish topped with a tomato and onion sauce, seasoned with salt, butter, sugar, and cayenne pepper, finished with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Spaghetti

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. Cook the tomatoes and onions together until soft.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, butter, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

Cook and bake

  1. Cook the spaghetti until tender.

  2. Drain the spaghetti.

  3. Pour the tomato and onion mixture over the drained spaghetti.

  4. Cover with cracker crumbs and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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

Tomatoes
Break down into the liquid base that coats the spaghetti and gives the sauce its body.
Onions
Soften and add savory sweetness that rounds out the acidity of the tomatoes.
Spaghetti
Forms the bulk of the dish and soaks up the sauce.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the baked dish.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. The cracker crumb topping needs enough time in the hot oven to brown and crisp. Pulling it too early leaves the top soft and pale, while the sauce underneath may still be cool in the center.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, sugar, 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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