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Italian Spaghetti

Spaghetti topped with steak and tomato sauce, served with Roman cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Italian Spaghetti

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut the garlic and rub the inside of a pan with it.

  2. Chop the garlic and onion, then fry them in butter.

  3. Add a little water and stew for 5 minutes.

  4. Brown the round steak pieces in the pan.

  5. Add the can of tomatoes and ¼ cup water, then let stew until the meat is done, stirring frequently.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the boiled spaghetti and sprinkle with Roman cheese before serving.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in the tomato sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the garlic and onion, carrying their flavor through the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens and browns in butter.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity, liquid and body that form the base of the sauce.
Spaghetti
Carries the sauce and gives the dish its starchy base.

The step that matters

Brown the round steak pieces in the pan.. Browning creates flavorful surface compounds through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are crowded or wet will steam instead, producing a greyer, blander result.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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