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Macaroni and Tomato

A simple pasta dish of macaroni simmered in a tomato sauce with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Macaroni and Tomato

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 and Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break macaroni into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Cook in a large pot of boiling salted water until tender, then drain and rinse with cold water.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook tomatoes with water, onion juice, sugar, salt, pepperberry, and bay leaf for 15 minutes, then strain.

  2. In the same saucepan, melt butter, add flour, and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the strained tomato mixture to the butter and flour, stirring until thickened.

  4. Add the cooked macaroni to the sauce and mix well.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and tomato mixture into a smooth sauce.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that the sauce coats.

The step that matters

Adding the tomato mixture to the roux. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour from clumping. Whisking in small amounts lets the starch hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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