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Tomato Sauce

A savory tomato sauce simmered with onion, thyme, ham, and spices, finished with flour and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,193 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the tomatoes and squeeze them to remove seeds.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the tomatoes, onion, thyme, bay leaf, celery, ham or bacon, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

Stew and thicken

  1. Set the mixture on low heat to stew gently until tender.

  2. Add the flour and moisten with broth.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

  4. Add a little cayenne.

  5. Taste for seasoning.

  6. Pass the sauce through a sieve.

  7. Return the sauce to the stewpan.

  8. Heat until it thickens.

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. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,012 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its fresh, acidic body as they break down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Broth
Moistens the sauce and adds savoury depth as the flour thickens it.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury, smoky flavour that seasons the tomatoes as they stew.

The step that matters

Heat until it thickens. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated long enough in liquid to swell, so the sauce must be kept at a gentle simmer and not left too thin. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, thyme, celery, ham, butter, sugar, 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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