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Macaroni a LA Milanaise

A macaroni dish with tomato sauce, ham, and cheese, simmered gently.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Macaroni a LA Milanaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, garlic, thyme, and parsley in a stewpan.

  2. Stew the mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  5. Add flour and cook over medium heat until browned but not burned.

  6. Remove from heat. Stir in enough boiling tomato juice to blend.

  7. Pour the butter‑flour mixture back into the stewpan with the tomatoes and stir until smooth.

  8. Add diced ham and boil for about 10 minutes.

Cook and serve the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni thoroughly.

  3. Add the drained macaroni to the sauce and let it stew gently for 20 minutes, ensuring it does not boil. Stir occasionally to prevent scorching.

  4. Serve the macaroni in a deep dish with grated cheese on the side.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Browned in butter and blended in, it thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce base.
Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish, absorbing the sauce as it stews.
Cold ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the macaroni gently without boiling. Boiling the pasta in the sauce can break it apart and cause the sauce to scorch on the bottom. A gentle simmer lets the macaroni absorb flavour while staying intact, and stirring occasionally prevents sticking.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, thyme, parsley, butter, pepper, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, thyme, parsley, butter, pepper, ham. 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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