Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni and Cheese with Tomatoes

A macaroni dish with tomato sauce and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Macaroni and Cheese with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the macaroni in salted water until tender, then drain in a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a cream sauce and strain in the can of cooked tomatoes.

  2. Season the sauce with pepper and salt.

Combine

  1. Combine the macaroni with the sauce and cheese, mixing well.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 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
Forms the starchy body of the dish that the sauce coats.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to add richness and savoury flavour.
Cooked tomatoes
Add moisture, acidity and colour to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the macaroni until tender. Pasta that is undercooked stays firm and can taste chalky, while overcooked pasta turns soft and mushy once combined with the sauce. Tasting a piece before draining helps you hit the point where it is tender but still holds its shape.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cheese):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes