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Tomato Cream Gravy

A creamy tomato gravy made with milk, flour, salt, and stewed tomato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until boiling.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk and season with salt.

  4. Cook in the double boiler for 5 to 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the hot stewed and strained tomato to the sauce and beat thoroughly.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rich milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and gives it body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the gravy its smooth, coating texture.
Stewed and strained tomato
Adds acidity and tomato flavour, and thins the sauce slightly when added.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it first with cold milk disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, sauce):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, sauce. 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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