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Sauce

Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made by simmering tomatoes with onion, garlic, bay leaf, parsley or celery root, then thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 base

  1. Put the tomatoes into a saucepan.

  2. Add the onion, cloves, bay leaf, and parsley or celery root.

  3. Simmer gently for 15 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Thicken and season

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth and bubbling hot.

  3. Pour in the strained tomato juice and stir until it reaches boiling point.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained tomato liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Forms the roux with flour and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until smooth and bubbling. Flour must be fully cooked in the melted butter and stirred smooth before liquid is added, or lumps form and the sauce tastes raw and floury.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, parsley, flour, butter, pepper. 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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