Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Sauce

A smooth tomato sauce made with stewed tomatoes, onion, parsley, celery, bay leaf, mace, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Martin, Maria Ewing, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Add 1 small chopped onion, 1 branch chopped parsley, and 1 branch chopped celery to 1 pint stewed tomatoes, with 1 bay leaf and 1 blade mace. Simmer slowly for 10 minutes.

  2. Rub to a pot until smooth 1 tablespoon each of butter and flour in a hot saucepan.

  3. Strain the sauce into the pan through a sieve, stir constantly until it boils, and add pepper and salt to taste.

Notes

  1. Any kind of chopped raw meat may be added if wanted stronger.

  2. It keeps well sealed, and it saves time to put up a few bottles of the sauce when canning tomatoes in the fall.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

177Calories
3 gProtein
12 gFat
17 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Tomato1 medium (123g)22
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
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 Martin, Maria Ewing, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp. 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Stewed tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce and supply its main body and acidity.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring until it boils. Flour mixed with hot butter can clump or scorch if not kept moving, and constant stirring helps the thickener disperse evenly as the sauce comes to a boil.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, onion, parsley, 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.

More tomato sauce recipes

Green 40Beef in 13Eggs in 13French 8Sweetbreads in 7Spiced 6 See all 512 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes