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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from ripe tomatoes, vinegar, salt, spices, sugar, and garlic, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wipe the tomatoes clean.

  2. Boil or bake the tomatoes until soft.

  3. Strain the tomatoes.

  4. Rub the strained tomatoes through a sieve to remove seeds and skins.

Cook the sauce

  1. Boil the juice for 1 hour.

  2. Add the ground spices and sugar to the juice.

  3. Boil all together until the mixture is smooth and no watery particles remain, about 5 hours.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the sauce in perfectly dry bottles and cork securely when cold.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tangy flavour of the sauce.
Brown vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and spices.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes that define the sauce's flavour.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that round out the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until smooth and no watery particles remain. The long reduction evaporates excess water and concentrates the tomato, so the sauce thickens and keeps its flavour. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery sauce that is more likely to spoil in the bottle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, allspice, sugar, garlic, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, sugar, garlic, 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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