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Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes and onion, then mixing with brown sauce and thickening with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes and onion for 10 minutes, then strain.

  2. Alternatively, while the tomato and onion mixture is boiling, add salt, pepper, and a little water.

Combine and serve

  1. Bring the strained mixture to a boil and gradually add it to the brown sauce, stirring constantly.

  2. Thicken with the flour and butter rubbed and browned together.

  3. Let it boil well and serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and carries most of its body and flavour.
Tomatoes
Provide the main tomato flavour and acidity once boiled and strained.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the tomato base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Browned with the flour to add nutty flavour and help thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter. Rubbing the flour and butter together and browning them creates a roux-like paste. Adding it to a boiling sauce and letting it cook through prevents raw flour taste and lumps, and gives smooth thickening.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, tomato, pepper, flour, butter. 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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