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Sauce

Tomato Sauce to Serve with Beef Loaf

A simple tomato sauce made with tomatoes, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and parsley, suitable for serving with beef loaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce to Serve with Beef Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Strain the tomatoes and heat them in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and flour.

  3. Add the creamed mixture to the heated tomatoes.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley to taste.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the liquid base and provide the sauce's main flavor and acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the creamed butter and flour to the hot tomatoes. Flour lumps easily when it hits hot liquid. Blending it smoothly with butter first and adding it gradually helps it disperse evenly, so the starch thickens the sauce without clumps.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, parsley. 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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