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Sauce

Peanut and Tomato Sauce

A sauce made with peanut flour, tomato juice, onion juice, salt, pepper, and fat, simmered for 10 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Peanut and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. In a saucepan, heat the fat over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the peanut flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the strained tomato juice, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

  4. Peanut + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together315 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Peanut flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a nutty, earthy flavor.
Strained tomato juice
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and provides its tomato flavor.
Fat
Carries flavor and helps the peanut flour cook smoothly into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the peanut flour. Stirring the peanut flour into the hot fat and cooking it briefly lets it lose its raw taste and thicken evenly, so the sauce does not turn out lumpy or pasty.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, tomato, onion, pepper. 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.

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