Skip to main content
Sauce

Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, water, spices, onion, butter, and corn starch, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, water, allspice, peppercorns, cloves, and parsley in a granite saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Fry the chopped onion in butter in a separate pan until yellow.

  4. Add corn starch to the onions and stir well.

  5. Combine the onion mixture with the boiling tomato mixture and simmer for 10 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and a little cayenne.

  2. Strain the sauce over boiled meat or 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 acidic, fruity flavor of the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Butter
Carries flavor from the fried onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Chopped onion
Adds savory depth and aroma once softened in butter.

The step that matters

Adding the onion mixture to the boiling tomatoes. Corn starch must be fully mixed into the onions first so it disperses without lumps, then the sauce must simmer so the starch swells and thickens it properly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, allspice, clove, parsley, butter, corn, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, allspice, clove, parsley, butter, corn, 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.

More tomato sauce recipes

Green 40Beef in 13Eggs in 13French 8Sweetbreads in 7Spiced 6 See all 512 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes