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Never tell someone from Sète that macaronade ��é�ٴǾ���e is just spaghetti bolognese.

It may feature pasta, tomato, meat and cheese – the same building blocks as bolognese – but that is where the similarities end.

“That has nothing to do with it. Plain and simple,” said Paul Chollet, a chef with the catering company Les Poêlées de Pépé.

Macaronade ��é�ٴǾ���e means exactly what it says. It originated in Sète, brought over by Italian immigrants who settled in the port city – becoming ��é�ٴǾ��� – and adapted it to local tastes.

The name comes from the pasta it requires: macaroni.

“Macaroni is the only possible choice for macaronade. Using spaghetti, it would no longer be a macaronade but a spaghettade,” wrote local chef Jean Brunelin.

Over time, Mr Brunelin noticed the dish being altered beyond recognition.

Different meats were substituted, various cheeses and pasta shapes used, wines switched between red, rosé or white, and the sauce made red instead of brown. The result was confusion, and outsiders began to compare it to bolognese.

To set the record straight, he wrote La cuisine ��é�ٴǾ���e de Jean Brunelin: Recettes et Histoires de la cuisine traditionnelle ��é�ٴǾ���e (L’An Demain, 2020), a collection of 130 traditional recipes from Sète, including macaronade ��é�ٴǾ���e.

His recipe is now considered the reference version and appears on Sète’s tourist office website.

It calls for six slices of chuck steak, 600g of pork chops in chunks, 500g of sausage, three onions, five cloves, 150g of sausage meat, garlic, parsley, 500-800g of tomato sauce, a glass of red wine, and either penne rigate or macaroni.

Yes, penne rigate is the only other pasta shape Mr Brunelin allows — and it is the one preferred by Mr Chollet.

The chuck steak is stuffed with garlic, parsley and unsmoked pork belly or sausage meat, rolled and secured with a toothpick.

These paupiettes and sliced onions are browned in a casserole, then set aside. The pan is deglazed with tomato concentrate, reduced, and red wine added to thicken.

The meat is returned to the pan with water and clove-studded onions to simmer gently.

After 30 minutes, the pork chunks are browned separately and added to the pot. Everything cooks slowly for two hours.

Fifteen minutes before the end, the sausage meat is browned and stirred in. The dish is ready when the beef falls apart and the sauce turns brownish – keeping the red of the tomato means it has not cooked long enough.

The pasta is cooked separately, then tossed with the sauce and topped with parmesan, pecorino and black pepper.

“Never in a million years sprinkle it with gruyère cheese,” wrote Mr Brunelin. In cooking competitions, he said, that mistake led to immediate disqualification.

Judging was once the role of the Confrérie du Taste Macaronade, a brotherhood founded by Mr Brunelin in 1987 to defend the dish, now abolished.

It was behind the largest macaronade ��é�ٴǾ���e ever made, cooked in 1989 by local chef and butcher Yves Broussard to feed 3,000 people.

Replacing the beef with fish, stuffed mussels or slipper lobster does not make a macaronade ��é�ٴǾ���e either, Mr Brunelin warned.

The only other meat he accepts is beef cheek, which is more gelatinous and cooks faster. It appears in what he calls macaronade bâtarde, a quicker version ready in under an hour for when time is short.

“When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, macaronade was only known to families in the northeast of the town,” he wrote. It was a Sunday dish for large family gatherings.

“Nowadays, it is one of the most popular dishes in Sète, along with the tielle [seafood pie],” he added, one that is cooked everyday.