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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with canned tomatoes, celery tops, parsley, onion, paprika, pepper, bay leaf, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the canned tomatoes with celery tops, parsley, onion, paprika, pepper, and bay leaf.

  2. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

  3. Thicken the sauce with cornstarch as needed.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the simmering liquid.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce by swelling in hot liquid and forming a smooth, glossy body.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with cornstarch as needed. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold liquid first and then stirred into simmering sauce, or it clumps. It thickens only once the mixture reaches a simmer, so add it gradually and wait a minute before judging the consistency.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, parsley, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, parsley, 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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