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Tomato Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, ham, tomatoes, herbs, and thickened with flour.

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

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onions, chopped carrots, and raw ham; sauté until browned.

Simmer the sauce

  1. Stir in the quartered tomatoes, parsley, thyme, pepper, bay leaves, and salt.

  2. Cover and cook slowly until done.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour diluted in cold broth to the desired consistency.

  4. Stir well until it boils, then let it cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  5. Remove the ham and herb bundle, and strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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

Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor as the base for sautéing the vegetables and ham.
Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the sauce as they cook down.
Flour
Thickens the sauce to the desired consistency when diluted in cold broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth once browned in the butter.
Lean raw ham
Contributes savory, meaty flavor to the sauce during the initial browning.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be diluted in cold broth before it goes into the hot sauce, because dry flour added directly clumps. Stirring until it boils then cooking gently lets the starch swell fully and thicken smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, ham, tomato, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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).

“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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