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Sauce

Sweet Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, onion, sugar, lemon juice, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, parsley, and peppermint, then thickening with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes, onion, sugar, lemon juice, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, parsley, and peppermint in enough water to cover for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Brown the flour in the coconut butter or olive oil.

  4. Add the browned flour to the strained juice and boil until slightly thickened.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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 tangy flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained juice as it boils, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes and lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Coconut butter or olive oil
Carries the flour as it browns, adding fat and a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred and watched so it turns golden rather than burning. Scorched flour tastes bitter and darkens the sauce, and under-browned flour can leave a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, lemon, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, parsley):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, lemon, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, parsley. 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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