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Tomato Savoury

A buttery tomato sauce with onions, milk, flour, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Savoury

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the minced onion and fry gently for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and cook until soft.

  4. Mix in the flour and enough milk to cover the mixture, then bring to a boil.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve and warm it up again.

  6. Finish with the cream before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping carry flavour through the sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the milk.
Milk
Loosens the flour mixture and adds creaminess to the sauce.
Cream
Adds smoothness and richness at the end.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour and milk, then bring to a boil. Flour must be fully mixed in and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce; stirring prevents lumps forming at the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, pepper, milk, flour, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, milk, flour, cream. 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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