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Onion Tomato Sauce

A tomato and onion sauce seasoned with parsley, sugar, pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Onion Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pare and thinly slice the tomatoes.

  2. Stew the tomatoes with the chopped onion for 30 minutes.

  3. Pulp the mixture through a colander.

  4. Return the pulp to the saucepan with seasoning.

  5. Heat until hot, then stir in the parsley and floured butter.

  6. Boil gently for 3 minutes.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid base of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it softens during stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and body, thickened by its flour coating as it heats.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 minutes after adding the floured butter. Flour-coated butter must be heated through so the starch swells and thickens the sauce and loses its raw floury taste. A vigorous boil can break or scorch the sauce, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, sugar, pepper, butter, 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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