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Tomato Sauce

A cooked tomato sauce seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, and finished with a butter‑flour roux.

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

Prepare the tomatoes

  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.

Cook and strain

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

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

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter rolled in flour. Let it boil once.

  2. 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
Form the body of the sauce and provide acidity and liquid as they stew down.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly when rolled into the butter and boiled.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour needs to be fully incorporated and brought to a boil to thicken the sauce properly and cook out its raw starchy taste. Stirring well as it goes in prevents lumps.

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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