Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Meat Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with bell peppers and garlic, thickened with flour and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spanish Meat Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook together the tomatoes, bell peppers, and garlic.

  2. Strain the mixture and combine it with brown gravy or the liquor from a pot roast.

  3. Thicken with flour if needed and add coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 tangy, acidic flavor of the sauce.
Bell peppers
Add sweet, vegetal flavor as they soften and cook down.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows as it cooks.
Brown gravy or pot roast liquor
Supplies savory depth and liquid to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour clumps if stirred in dry or added too quickly. It needs to be fully whisked into the liquid and simmered so the sauce thickens smoothly and the raw flour taste cooks off.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, garlic, flour):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, garlic, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes