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Tomato Sauce

A pork-based tomato sauce simmered with carrots, onions, and herbs, finished with butter to prevent skin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a tall, thick-bottomed saucepan, fry the pork with the butter until nearly melted.

  2. Add the carrots, onions, and bouquet garni.

  3. Cook and stir the vegetables.

  4. Stir in the flour.

  5. Cook until it begins to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the tomatoes and white stock. Mix well.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add the salt, sugar, pepper, and crushed garlic.

  4. Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  5. Pass the sauce through a sieve or tammy.

  6. Bring to a boil while stirring continuously.

Serve

  1. Pour into a tureen.

  2. Butter the surface to prevent a skin from forming.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and vegetables.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the base.
White stock
Supplies liquid that carries the sauce to a smooth, pourable consistency.
Breast of pork
Renders fat into the base, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury aroma as they soften in the fat.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until it begins to brown. Flour must be cooked long enough to lose its raw starch taste, but stopping at the first colour change keeps the roux from turning bitter and darkening the sauce too much.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, onion, flour, butter, 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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