Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Sauce for Baked Fish

A tomato-based sauce with olives and lemon, thickened with flour and water, served over baked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce for Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sauce

  1. Heat the tomatoes in a pan to a boiling point with the baking soda.

  2. Strain the mixture, then add the olives and olive juice, along with the sliced lemons.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Thicken the sauce with a little flour and water, stirring until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over baked fish.

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 + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 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

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the sauce and provide its base flavor and acidity.
Olives
Add a briny, savory flavor that balances the tomatoes.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity and citrus aroma to the sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acidity, softening the sauce's tartness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and water. Dry flour clumps when added straight to hot liquid. Mixing it with water first and stirring until smooth lets the starch disperse evenly, so it swells into a smooth, uniform thickening as the sauce heats.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, olive, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes