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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with canned tomatoes, water, spices, butter, onion, cornstarch, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,874 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, combine the canned tomatoes and water.

  2. Add the peppercorns, allspice, cloves, and butter.

  3. Stir in the chopped onion and cornstarch mixed with a little water.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Cook and store

  1. Boil for 5 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  2. Store in a jar for use in flavoring warmed dishes.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 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

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic tomato flavor of the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat and rounds out the flavor of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor as it cooks into the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the cornstarch with a little water first. Cornstarch added dry to hot liquid clumps and won't thicken evenly. Suspending it in cold water first lets the starch disperse so it thickens smoothly when heated.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, allspice, clove, butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, allspice, clove, butter, 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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