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Sauce

Canned Tomato Sauce

A sweet and spiced tomato sauce made from canned tomatoes, dried peppers, onions, sugar, spices, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Canned Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop or grate the dried red peppers and onions.

Cook the sauce

  1. Combine the peppers, onions, canned tomatoes, brown sugar, ground cloves, ground mace, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, coarse sea salt, and vinegar in a large kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture steadily, stirring occasionally, until it reaches the consistency of ketchup.

Store

  1. Cool the sauce and store it in airtight bottles.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, liquid and tomato flavor of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during boiling.
Dried red peppers
Add heat and pungent flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until it reaches the consistency of ketchup. Long, steady boiling evaporates water and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the kettle, so stirring occasionally matters.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, tomato, sugar, clove, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, tomato, sugar, clove, cinnamon, ginger. 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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