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Tomato Sauce, for Hot or Cold Meats

A tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes with vinegar, garlic, and salt, suitable for hot or cold meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce, for Hot or Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place ripe tomatoes in an earthen jar.

  2. Set the jar in the oven after the bread is done, until the tomatoes are soft.

  3. Remove the skin from the tomatoes and mash the pulp.

Season and store

  1. Mix the pulp with vinegar and pounded garlic, adjusting quantities to the amount of tomatoes.

  2. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Store the mixture in small, wide-mouthed bottles, corked tightly, in a cool, dry place.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavour of the sauce once softened and mashed.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Cloves of garlic
Add pungent aroma and savoury flavour when pounded into the pulp.

The step that matters

Store the mixture tightly corked in a cool, dry place. Sealing the sauce in clean, tightly corked bottles limits air and microbial contamination, which is what keeps a vinegar-acidified tomato sauce from spoiling.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, garlic):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, garlic. 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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