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Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

A simple pasta dish with butter, flour, and stewed tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spaghetti

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the spaghetti, bending it as it softens, and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the spaghetti in a colander.

  4. Place the drained spaghetti in a pan of cold water for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in the strained tomatoes.

  4. Cook until the sauce boils.

Combine and serve

  1. Carefully add the spaghetti to the sauce.

  2. Let the mixture boil once.

  3. Serve without cutting.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 absorbs some of the sauce as it is served.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter, giving it body.
Stewed tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and liquid base of the sauce, adding acidity and sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the flour and mix until smooth. Flour clumps if added to hot fat without thorough stirring. Mixing it into the melted butter until smooth lets the starch disperse evenly before the tomatoes are added, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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