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Calamari in Red Wine and Tomato Sauce

"Italian Christmas eve favorite - use your favorite spaghetti or tomato sauce as the base. This recipe can be doubled or tripled easily. Serve as a side, appetizer, or over pasta. Buon Natale!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,580 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

6 servings

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tomato + winetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,979 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,820 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sauce, wine, olive, garlic, pepper, basil):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sauce, wine, olive, garlic, pepper, basil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).