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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with canned tomatoes, onion, cloves, 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: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Put the can of tomatoes in a stew pan over the fire.

  2. Add the slice of onion, whole cloves, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve.

Make the roux and combine

  1. In another pan, melt the butter.

  2. Sprinkle the flour into the melted butter.

  3. Stir until the mixture browns and froths.

  4. Stir the tomato pulp into the butter and flour mixture.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Forms the main body and flavor of the sauce once cooked and strained.
Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness, and forms the base of the roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and tomato liquid.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and depth to the tomato base while it simmers.

The step that matters

Stirring the tomato pulp into the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be evenly dispersed in the fat and then in the liquid, because starch granules clump if they meet liquid unevenly. Steady stirring keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, 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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