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Macaroni a Litalienne

A pasta dish of macaroni simmered with tomato sauce, onion, cheese, and butter.

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 a Litalienne

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into 1-inch pieces and drop into the boiling salted water.

  2. Add the half onion with the cloves stuck in it and boil until tender, about 25 minutes.

  3. Drain the macaroni, remove the onion, and reheat the tomato sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cheese, butter, and macaroni to the sauce and mix well.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Clove + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides the starchy base that gives the dish its body and chew.
Tomato sauce
Supplies moisture and acidity that coats the pasta and carries the flavour.
Cheese
Melts into the warm sauce, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that smooths the sauce and gives it a rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni until tender. Pasta keeps cooking as it sits, so draining at the right point keeps it from turning soft and mushy in the sauce. Cooking it fully in well-salted water also seasons the pasta through.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, sauce, cheese, butter. 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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