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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from stewed tomatoes, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the tomatoes and cut them into pieces without peeling.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with salt, cayenne pepper, allspice, cloves, and mace.

  3. Stew slowly until soft, then pass through a sieve to remove skins and spices.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the butter rolled in flour, let it boil once, then serve.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, moisture and acidity that form the sauce once stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly when rolled into the butter and added to the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until soft. Slow stewing softens the tomatoes and releases their juice gently. Rapid boiling can scorch the bottom of the pan and give a burnt taste before the pulp is ready to be sieved.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, allspice, clove, 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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