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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, peppers, onion, celery, carrot, and butter, thickened with flour and finished with sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stick cloves into the onion and roast it.

  2. Rub a good-sized piece of butter with flour to thicken the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine tomatoes, carrot, bay leaf, peppers, and celery.

  2. Let the mixture simmer until it reduces by half.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce and add either sweet or sour cream.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 and acidity of the sauce as they cook down.
Butter
Adds richness and, blended with flour, helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy note, softening the sauce's acidity.
Red onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it roasts with the cloves.

The step that matters

Simmering until reduced by half. Simmering concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce, but cooking too fast or too long can scorch the bottom or over-thicken it. Stir and watch the level so it reduces evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, celery, clove, butter, tomato, flour, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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