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Tomato Sauce

A homemade tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onion, thyme, bay leaf, celery, ham or bacon, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, flour, broth, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,193 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the tomatoes and squeeze to remove seeds.

  2. In a saucepan, combine tomatoes, onion, thyme, bay leaf, celery, ham or bacon, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook gently until all ingredients are tender.

  2. Stir in flour and moisten with broth; boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Add cayenne pepper and adjust seasoning to taste.

  4. Pass the sauce through a sieve until smooth.

  5. Return to the saucepan and cook until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

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. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 and acidic, fruity flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it can coat the back of a spoon.
Sugar
Balances the tomatoes' acidity with a touch of sweetness.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty depth and aroma to the base.
Broth
Moistens the flour and adds savoury body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and boiling. Flour must be stirred in smoothly and boiled so its starch fully cooks and thickens. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and weak body in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, thyme, celery, ham, 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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