Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,810 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓
Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the tomatoes, celery, onion, parsley, and bay leaf in a pot for 25 minutes.
Strain the mixture and return it to a double boiler.
Cream the butter and flour together, then add to the tomato mixture.
Stir in the beef extract and season with salt and pepper to taste.
If the sauce is thicker than desired, thin it with boiling water.
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.
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Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together6,810 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together34,122 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together3,377 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together16,012 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together17,092 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
- Tomatoes
- Provide the main body and acidic, sweet flavour of the sauce.
- Butter and flour
- Creamed together to form a roux-style mixture that thickens the sauce.
- Beef extract
- Adds savoury depth to the sauce.
The step that matters
Adding the butter and flour. Butter and flour must be creamed and blended into the hot mixture so the starch dissolves evenly; added in lumps, the flour stays gritty and the sauce thickens unevenly.
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, parsley, butter, flour, beef, pepper):
- Carrotbetter flavor fit
- Okrabetter flavor fit
- Capsicumbetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, parsley, butter, flour, beef, 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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