Name: Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: tomatoes; coarse sea salt; cloves; nutmeg; 1 teaspoon butter; 1 teaspoon browned flour; 1 tablespoon sugar

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes for a few moments, adding coarse sea salt, cloves, and nutmeg.
Strain the mixture.
Add 1 teaspoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of browned flour, and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,474 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 its main acidity and moisture.
Browned flour: Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.
Cloves: Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Nutmeg: Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, nutmeg, butter, flour, sugar):

Arrowrootfits better
Shallotfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, nutmeg, butter, flour, sugar. 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.