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Tomatoes and Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish layered with tomato sauce and optional breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Tomatoes and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into 1-2 inch pieces.

  2. Cook the macaroni in boiling water with salt for about 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the macaroni well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer macaroni in a well-buttered pudding dish, adding tomato sauce between layers. Continue layering until the dish is filled.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes.

  3. For a crispy topping, cover with buttered breadcrumbs and bake 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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the bulk and structure of the dish, holding its shape as it bakes.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity that flavours the pasta layers as they bake.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when baked over the dish.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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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