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Tomato Sauce

A simmered tomato sauce with cloves, parsley, pepper, and optional stock and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes with cloves, parsley, pepper, and salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Add the flour and cook, stirring, until well mixed.

  3. Stir in the tomato pulp until smooth.

  4. If desired, add stock and onion slices for extra flavor.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Provide the main body, flavor, and pulp that forms the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour together. The flour must cook in the melted butter until well mixed so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw taste. Adding the tomato pulp before this roux is fully combined can leave lumps and a floury flavor.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, parsley, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, parsley, pepper, butter, flour. 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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