Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce Tomate- -tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made with tomatoes, stock, butter, onions, carrots, smoked ham, garlic, flour, herbs, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Sauce Tomate- -tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash and cut the tomatoes into pieces.

  2. Place tomatoes in a saucepan with stock and stew for 20 minutes.

Make the base

  1. Heat butter in another saucepan.

  2. Add onions, carrots, and smoked ham; cook until butter clears.

  3. Add garlic and flour.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes without browning.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the stewed tomatoes and herbs.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Season to taste and reduce to a good consistency.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with the butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Stock
Adds liquid and savoury depth for stewing the tomatoes.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury aromatic base for the sauce.
Smoked ham
Adds smoky, salty savour that flavours the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour without browning. Cooking the butter and flour together for 10 minutes cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the roux thicken evenly. Browning would add a darker colour and nutty flavour that changes the sauce's intended character.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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

More tomato sauce recipes

Green 40Beef in 13Eggs in 13French 8Sweetbreads in 7Spiced 6 See all 512 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes