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Macaroni, Italian

A simple Italian macaroni dish with tomato sauce, onion, butter or olive oil, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Macaroni, Italian

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Cover with boiling water and add salt; boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and rinse with cold water, then drain again.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter or heat the olive oil in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until slightly brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and mix until smooth.

  4. Add the strained tomato and mix well.

  5. Stir in the grated cheese.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the macaroni and serve.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Macaroni
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it bulk and a firm, chewy bite.
Butter or olive oil
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the macaroni instead of running off.
Strained tomato
Provides the sauce's base, adding acidity and savoury flavour.
Grated cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and helps the sauce turn rich and clinging.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until slightly brown. Browning the onion in fat develops sweeter, deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction. Taking it too pale leaves the sauce flat, while over-browning can make it bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, 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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