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Tomato Sauce, Mock

A carrot-based sauce made with water, vinegar, sugar, ale, sour apple, shallots, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 859 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce, Mock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, vinegar, coarse sea salt, and sugar, then bring to a boil.

  2. Add the red part of the carrots and boil until soft.

  3. Remove the carrots with an egg slicer and rub through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a preserving pan, mix the carrot pulp with ale, vinegar, sour apple, minced shallots, salt, cayenne, mustard, and powdered mace.

  2. Stir the mixture over gentle heat for about 30 minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. Let it cool, then transfer to bottles and cork securely.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep for 3 to 4 weeks.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together803 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,073 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red carrots
Their pulp forms the body and sweetness of the sauce once rubbed smooth.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and a tart edge that balances the sweetness of the carrots.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that gives the sauce its tangy character and helps it keep.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and a mild sharpness as they soften during gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Stirring over gentle heat. Heating the carrot pulp gently for the full time lets the flavours blend and thicken the sauce evenly. Higher heat risks scorching the pulp on the bottom of the pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, carrot, apple, shallot, mustard):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, carrot, apple, shallot, mustard. 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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