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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onion, parsley, bay leaf, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine strained tomatoes, bay leaf, scraped onion, parsley, salt, and pepper. Boil for five minutes.

  2. Remove the parsley and bay leaf.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, blend together butter and flour.

  2. Add the butter-flour mixture to the sauce to thicken.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  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. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Strained tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce and provide its main liquid and tomato flavor.
Butter and flour
Blended together, the flour thickens the sauce, and the butter adds richness and smoothness.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture. Flour must be blended with butter first so it disperses without lumps. Added directly to hot liquid, it can clump, and the sauce may thicken unevenly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, 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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