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Tomato Sauce

A thick sauce made from tomatoes, onions, apples, raisins, lemons, brown sugar, suet, red pepper, and vinegar boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, apples, raisins, and lemons finely together.

  2. Add the brown sugar, suet, red pepper, and vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and supply most of its body and moisture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and deepens the flavour as the mixture cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Apples
Contribute pectin and body, helping the sauce thicken as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling for 2 hours. The long boil is what thins the tomato and fruit into a thick, cohesive sauce as water evaporates. Sugar and fruit solids scorch easily on the base of the pan, so the heat should stay at a steady boil rather than high enough to burn.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, apple, lemon, sugar, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, apple, lemon, sugar, pepper, vinegar. 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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