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Tomato Sauce

A cooked tomato, onion, green pepper, parsley, and garlic sauce thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onion, green pepper, parsley, and garlic.

  2. Cook the mixture for 30 minutes without adding water.

  3. Strain the sauce.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Add the strained sauce to the butter and flour mixture.

  3. Cook for an additional 30 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

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

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 flavor of the sauce as they break down during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the melted butter before the strained sauce is added.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture without adding water. The tomatoes and vegetables release their own liquid as they cook down, concentrating flavor. Adding water would dilute the sauce and extend the time needed to reduce it.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, parsley, garlic, 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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