Skip to main content
Main

Cream Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce thickened with butter, flour, and milk, flavored with mace, bay leaf, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Colville, Jessie Henderson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the tomatoes

  1. Heat a pint of strained tomatoes and 1 slice of onion.

  2. Add 1 blade of mace, 1 bay leaf, and a pinch of soda to the tomatoes; boil gently until reduced by half.

  3. Rub together 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of butter; add to the tomatoes and cook for 1–2 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and add 2 cupfuls of rich milk, a spoonful of pepper, and 2 teaspoons of salt; stir.

  2. Strain and serve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

609Calories
14 gProtein
13 gFat
107 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Colville, Jessie Henderson. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce once cooked with the butter into a roux.
Rich milk (in the method)
Adds creaminess and softens the sharpness of the tomatoes.
Soda (in the method)
A pinch reduces some of the tomatoes' acidity.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour into the tomatoes. Cooking the flour and butter for 1–2 minutes removes the raw floury taste and lets the starch thicken evenly. Adding it unevenly or too quickly can leave lumps or a pasty flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes