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Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made with butter, onions, green pepper, tomatoes, vegetable stock, olives, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Henrietta Latham Dwight · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,451 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt a large tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan over the fire.

  2. When it bubbles, add a small onion and half a green pepper, chopped very fine.

  3. Simmer gently for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in a heaping teaspoonful of flour.

  5. Add four nice, fresh tomatoes peeled and cut small (canned tomatoes may be used), a gill of vegetable stock, a clove, part of a bay leaf, and pepper and salt to taste.

  6. Let it cook gently for half an hour and press through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat a small tablespoonful of butter to a cream.

  2. Add salt, pepper, dry mustard and sugar to taste and the raw yolk of an egg.

  3. Add a tablespoonful of olives, small cucumbers and capers chopped very fine and a few drops of onion juice.

  4. Serve with mock fish cutlets and croquettes.

By Henrietta Latham Dwight. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,430 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

Tomatoes (in the method)
Provide the main body, flavour and acidity of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce slightly, giving it body.
Egg yolk (in the method)
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a smoother body.

The step that matters

Adding the raw egg yolk. The yolk is added raw to the finished sauce, so it must be stirred in well and not boiled. Heat can scramble the egg and make the sauce grainy or curdled.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, olive, pepper, mustard):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, olive, pepper, mustard. 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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