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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made with onion, coconut butter, flour, sweet milk, tomato juice, and peanut butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a skillet, fry the chopped onion in coconut butter until golden brown.

  2. Add the flour and cook until it browns.

  3. Gradually stir in the sweet milk and tomato juice.

  4. Cook until the sauce thickens.

  5. Mix the peanut butter with a little milk and add to the sauce for flavor.

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. Coconut + peanuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peanuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peanuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together315 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

Flour
Browns with the fat and thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the sauce body.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and tomato flavor to the sauce.
Coconut butter
Fat that fries the onion and carries flavor through the sauce.
Peanut butter
Adds nutty richness and flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until it browns. Flour cooked in fat must brown enough to lose its raw taste, but not burn. Adding liquid too early or stirring in liquid too quickly can leave lumps, so the flour should be fully mixed into the fat first.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, coconut, butter, flour, milk, peanut):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, coconut, butter, flour, milk, peanut. 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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