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Italian Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, flour, broth, tomato sauce, wine, herbs, and optional mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the chopped onion in butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour.

  2. Add the soup or broth, tomato sauce, and white wine. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix in the chopped parsley and mushrooms if using. Cook until the sauce reduces to half.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browned in butter to build a sweet, savory base for the sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquids.
Soup or broth
Supplies the main liquid and savory flavor of the sauce.
Tomato sauce
Adds tomato flavor, acidity, and color to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps the sauce reduce with flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until the sauce reduces to half. Reducing concentrates flavors and thickens the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and dull, while cooking too long can make it overly salty and sticky.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, tomato, sauce, white wine, 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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