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Tomato Sauce

A simmered tomato sauce with bay leaf, parsley, onion, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Simmer tomatoes, bay leaf, parsley, and onion for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Thicken and season

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat without browning.

  2. Add flour to the melted butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir the smooth mixture into the strained tomato sauce.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when cooked in butter.

The step that matters

Melting butter without browning. Over low heat the butter should melt gently without browning, so the flour cooks into a smooth roux with a clean, neutral flavor. Browned butter would change the taste and color of the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, onion, butter, flour, 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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