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Sweet Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes with onion, sugar, lemon juice, spices, and herbs, then thickened with browned 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 in enough water to cover them for one hour with the onion, sugar, lemon juice, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, parsley, and peppermint.

  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
Form the main body and flavor of the sauce as they break down during boiling.
Flour
Thickens the strained juice when browned in fat and then boiled.
Coconut butter or olive oil
Carries the flour as it browns, adding richness and a toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour to the strained juice. Flour needs to be cooked in hot fat and then kept at a boil in liquid to thicken fully and avoid a raw, pasty taste. Stirring it in smoothly and simmering until slightly thickened ensures an even texture.

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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