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Tomato Sauce

A savory sauce made with bacon, butter, onion, tomatoes, flour, stock, herbs, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine bacon, butter, and onion in a stewpan. Fry for a few minutes.

  2. Add sliced tomatoes. Stir over heat for a little longer.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix flour with a little cold stock or gravy. Gradually stir in the stock.

  2. Add peppercorns, savory herbs, and parsley. Allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the herbs. Rub the sauce through a sieve. Return the sauce to the stewpan.

Finish

  1. Season with salt, sugar, and pepper. Finish with a pat of fresh butter.

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat and adds savory, smoky flavor to the base.
Butter
Carries flavor from the onion and bacon and adds richness at the end.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the fat.
Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and fresh tomato flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when mixed in before the liquid.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the tomatoes and flour are cooked into.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold stock before adding the rest. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Blending it first with a little cold stock lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, parsley, sugar, 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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