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Macaroni — Italian Fashion

A simple pasta dish of boiled macaroni tossed with butter, pepper, tomato conserve, and served with grated Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Macaroni — Italian Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Wash the macaroni and break it into two-inch pieces.

  2. Boil water with salt and add the macaroni.

  3. Strain the macaroni after cooking.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stew pan, combine the macaroni with butter, pepper, and salt for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in the tomato conserve and serve with grated Parmesan cheese on the side.

  3. Optionally, rub the stew pan with garlic for added flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and carries the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and carrying flavor.
Tomato conserve
Adds concentrated tomato flavor, sweetness and acidity to the pasta.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, pepper, parmesan cheese):

  1. Basilfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

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