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Macaroni and Tomatoes

A baked macaroni dish with tomato sauce, butter, flour, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the macaroni until tender.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the steamed tomatoes and stir until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the tomato sauce over the cooked macaroni. Cover with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the dish, giving it a tender, starchy body that holds the sauce.
Steamed tomatoes
Provide the main moisture and acidity, forming the sauce that coats the pasta.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour into the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux, helping the tomato sauce cling to the macaroni.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp top that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. Cooking the flour for a minute in the melted butter removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the sauce evenly when the tomatoes are added. Skipping this makes the sauce taste floury and pasty.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread. 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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