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Tomato Sauce for Fish

A tomato sauce with onions, garlic, parsley, butter, flour, and Tabasco, served over baked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,768 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the onion, cloves, and tomatoes in a pot.

  2. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  4. Remove the pan from heat. Stir in the flour.

  5. Cook until frothy.

  6. Add the tomato mixture. Stir until it boils.

  7. Strain the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve over baked fish.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and tomato mixture into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the tomato base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour off the heat. Stirring flour into hot butter off the heat prevents it from clumping before it is evenly dispersed. Cooking it until frothy then cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the thickener work once the tomato mixture is added.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

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

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