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Sauce

Tomato Crbam

A creamy tomato sauce made with canned tomatoes, butter, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Crbam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the canned tomatoes until tender.

  2. Pass the tomatoes through a sieve, allowing some pulp to remain.

  3. Season with salt, butter, and pepper.

  4. Just before serving, add the baking soda.

  5. Once boiling, stir in the milk and cream.

Serve

  1. Serve quickly.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Form the sauce base, providing acidity, flavor, and body once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, which can cause the milk to curdle.
Milk
Dilutes the tomato base and creates a creamy, mellow sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before serving. Baking soda reacts with the tomato's acid, releasing carbon dioxide and raising pH. Added too early or in excess, it can cause foaming and a soapy taste. Adding it last, just before the dairy, limits that reaction and helps keep the milk from curdling.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, milk, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, cream. 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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