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Cream Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, onion, mace, bay leaf, butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a pot, combine strained tomatoes, onion, baking soda, mace, and bay leaf.

  2. Boil gently until reduced by half.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, rub together flour and butter.

  2. Add the flour-butter mixture to the tomatoes and cook for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in heated milk, salt, and pepper.

  4. Strain the sauce and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Strained tomatoes
Form the main body and acidic base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and tomatoes.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and softens the tomato's sharp acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the milk off the heat. Tomato acid can cause milk proteins to curdle when hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring in the warmed milk helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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