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Sauce Tomate

A tomato sauce simmered with onions, herbs, and butter, thickened with a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Sauce Tomate

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Tomate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. Peel the tomatoes and place them in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of butter, thyme, onions, and parsley.

  2. Set the saucepan over boiling water and stew gently for 3 hours.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve, discarding the seeds and herbs.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate pan, prepare a roux by cooking 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour over medium heat until light golden-brown.

  2. Remove the roux from heat and stir in the strained tomato sauce.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and stir, boiling for 3 to 5 minutes until rich and thick.

  4. If the sauce is already thick, use less roux.

  5. If serving with fricandeau, veal sauté, or filet of beef, add the meat juices to the sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften during stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the base and the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.

The step that matters

Thickening the roux-based sauce. Flour must be cooked in butter until light golden-brown so it loses its raw taste and thickens smoothly. Adding roux to hot sauce while stirring prevents lumps, and boiling for 3 to 5 minutes fully thickens the starch.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, pepper, parsley, thyme, sugar, flour. 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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