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Tomato SAUCE-i

A savory sauce made with butter, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, ham, tomatoes, and seasonings, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato SAUCE-i

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the onion, carrot, thyme, bay leaf, celery, parsley, and ham for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and cook until browned and thickened.

  3. Stir in the tomatoes and cook for 45 minutes.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Finish and store

  1. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

  2. Store the strained sauce in a cold place for several days.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 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

Onion, carrot, celery
Aromatic vegetables that build the savory flavor base of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries their flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and browns.
Tomatoes
Main body and acidity of the sauce, cooked down to a smooth base.
Boiled ham
Adds a salty, savory meat note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until browned and thickened. Flour needs enough heat and stirring to cook out its raw taste and thicken evenly; stopping too early leaves a pasty, floury sauce, while lumps form if liquid is not stirred in smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, thyme, celery, parsley, ham, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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