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Tomato Sauce

A simple sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, tomatoes, flour, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and carrot.

  3. Fry until brown, then add the flour, sliced tomatoes, salt, pepper, and water.

  4. Cook for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain through a 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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 sweetness of the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury aroma as it browns in the butter.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the liquid.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the onion and carrot brown.

The step that matters

Fry until brown. Browning the onion and carrot triggers Maillard reactions, which build deep savoury flavour. Pale vegetables make a flat, raw-tasting sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, onion, carrot. 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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