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Tomato Sauce for Keeping

A preserved tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes with vinegar, garlic, shallot, salt, capsicum, cayenne, gherkins, onions, lemon juice, and boiling until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce for Keeping

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Choose ripe, red tomatoes and place them in a jar with a cover.

  2. Bake the tomatoes in a cool oven overnight until tender.

  3. Check in the morning; they should be soft enough to skin.

  4. Rub the tomatoes through a sieve.

  5. Measure the pulp.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the corresponding amount of vinegar and other ingredients.

  2. Boil the mixture until everything is tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve again.

  4. Add the lemon juice.

  5. Boil until the sauce thickens to a cream‑like consistency, stirring continuously.

Bottle and seal

  1. Once cooled, bottle the sauce.

  2. Cork well. Seal the corks.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

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

  3. Capsicum + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing body, flavour and natural acidity once reduced.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps preserve the sauce for long keeping.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury flavour.
Sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps preserve it by drawing out moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds fresh acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Pickled onions
Add savoury depth and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until the sauce thickens to a cream-like consistency. Stirring continuously prevents the thick pulp from scorching on the bottom of the pan. Reducing the sauce concentrates its flavour and body, and the acidity it contains helps it keep once bottled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, garlic, shallot, capsicum, pepper, onion):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, garlic, shallot, capsicum, pepper, onion. 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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