Name: Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: 6 to 8 tomatoes; ½ cup water; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; broth, tomato juice, or water as needed; 1 tablespoon butter or ⅓ cup oil

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes with water, pepper, and salt until they are soft and jelly-like.
Pass the cooked tomatoes through a colander back into the saucepan.
Add broth, tomato juice, or water to achieve desired sauce thickness.
Let the sauce boil briefly.
Before serving, stir in butter or oil, which will remain separate from 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.

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.

Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,918 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Break down into soft pulp that forms the body of the sauce.
Butter or oil: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, floating separately rather than blending in.