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Tomato Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, ham, tomatoes, herbs, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the onions, carrots, and ham; cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the tomatoes, parsley, thyme, pepper, bay leaves, and salt.

  4. Cover and cook slowly until the tomatoes are soft.

  5. Thicken the sauce with flour diluted in cold broth to the desired consistency.

  6. Stir well until it boils, then let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  7. Remove the ham and herb bundle, and strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base vegetables and ham as they cook.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they brown in the fat.
Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity, and flavor of the sauce as they soften and break down.
Flour
Thickens the sauce to the desired consistency when stirred into the broth.
Lean raw ham
Contributes savory, meaty flavor to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the tomatoes slowly until soft. Gentle covered cooking softens the tomatoes and draws out their juices without scorching the base, so the sauce develops even flavor before it is thickened and strained.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, ham, tomato, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, ham, tomato, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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