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Sauce

Tomato Sauce for Rice Croquettes

A tomato-based sauce seasoned with onion, salt, cayenne, bay leaf, celery seed, brown sugar, butter, and flour, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce for Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, chopped onion, salt, cayenne pepper, bay leaf, and celery seed in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for a few minutes until the tomatoes soften and the juice absorbs the seasoning.

  3. Strain the mixture, then add brown sugar, butter, and flour.

  4. Return to the stove and cook until the sauce thickens to a creamy consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture in the sauce.
Tomatoes
Form the sauce's base, supplying liquid, body and acidity.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Return to the stove and cook until the sauce thickens. Flour needs sustained heat to cook out its raw starch taste and to thicken properly. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and floury, while overcooking can make it pasty or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, sugar, butter, flour. 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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