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Tomato Sauce

A cooked tomato sauce seasoned with onion juice, sugar, salt, pepper, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Cook the tomatoes for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the cooked tomatoes through a coarse bag into a saucepan.

Finish the sauce

  1. Season with onion juice, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in the butter cooked to a roux with the flour.

  3. Simmer for 2 minutes 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, liquid and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms a roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with the butter into a roux, it thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour into a roux. Flour must be cooked in fat before it goes into the hot sauce. Cooking it develops a nutty flavour and removes raw starch taste, and stirring it in smoothly prevents lumps and gives an even, thickened texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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