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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from peeled tomatoes, milk, butter, and flour, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Dip the tomatoes in hot water to loosen the skins, then peel and slice them.

  2. Put the sliced tomatoes in a pan with the cold water and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve back into the saucepan.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the milk, butter, and seasoning to the saucepan.

  2. Thicken with the flour mixed with a little cold water and serve in a hot tureen.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and tart flavour of the sauce once cooked and sieved.
Milk
Adds richness and a mild, creamy body to the tomato base.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, rounder mouthfeel and richer flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the back of a spoon.

The step that matters

Thicken with the flour mixture. Flour must be blended smoothly with cold water before it goes in, because it clumps if added dry or to hot liquid. Stir it in and keep the sauce at a simmer so the starch swells evenly and thickens fully.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

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