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Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made with ham, carrot, onion, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, garlic, butter, flour, tomatoes, consomme, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine raw ham, carrot, onion, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, garlic, and butter in a saucepan, then simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Mix flour into the tomatoes and consomme, then add to the saucepan.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then strain 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the tomato liquid.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour from the aromatics and enriches the sauce.
Raw ham
Adds savoury depth to the base as it simmers.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, onion, thyme, garlic, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, onion, thyme, garlic, 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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