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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with butter, onion, flour, tomatoes, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Melt the butter in a pot.

  2. Add the sliced onion and let it brown.

  3. Remove from heat and strain the onions out of the butter.

  4. Mix the flour with the butter.

  5. Add the strained tomatoes, salt, and sugar. Stir well.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Carries the onion flavour and forms the base for the roux-style thickening.
Flour
Mixed with the butter to thicken the sauce as it cooks with the tomatoes.
Onion
Browned in butter to add savoury, sweet depth to the sauce.
Strained tomatoes
Form the body of the sauce and provide its acidity and main flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with the butter. Flour must be fully combined into the fat before the tomatoes go in. Lumps of uncooked flour stay gritty and can make the sauce taste floury, while a smooth blend thickens evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, 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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