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Thick Tomato Sauce

A thickened tomato sauce made with tomatoes, garlic, onion, spices, and a roux of butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 20,633 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Thick Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine tomatoes, cloves, bay leaf, salt, white pepper, and onion in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve to remove the skins.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a clean saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour gradually until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the strained tomato juice, stirring continuously.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds smooth, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot tomato liquid.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the tomato juice to the roux. Flour mixed into melted butter forms a roux; adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps starch granules dispersed, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, onion, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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