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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onion, cloves, butter, and flour, suitable for fish, meat, or macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Cook the tomatoes, onion, and cloves for 10 minutes.

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth and browned.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the cooked tomatoes.

  2. Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. Strain the sauce.

  5. Serve with fish, meat, or macaroni.

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

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

  2. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 main body of the sauce and supply moisture and acidity.
Butter
Provides fat that carries flavor and helps form the flour base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot fat and liquid.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice note to the simmering tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the melted butter until smooth and browned. Flour must be cooked evenly in the fat so it dissolves without lumps and thickens the sauce. Stirring constantly prevents scorching and lumps, and browning adds a deeper, nutty flavor.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, flour, onion. 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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