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Tomato Puree

A smooth tomato puree made by simmering tomatoes with aromatics, then thickened with a butter‑onion roux and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Puree

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Puree

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Combine tomatoes, water or stock, bay leaf, parsley, celery, peppercorns, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer until the tomatoes are thoroughly soft.

Make the roux

  1. Heat butter in another saucepan and add the sliced onion; fry without browning.

  2. Add flour to the onion and cook without browning the flour.

  3. Dilute the roux with some of the tomato mixture.

  4. Mix the diluted roux well with the rest of the tomatoes.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with coarse sea salt.

  2. Strain the puree through a sieve.

  3. Heat the strained puree again before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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 and flavor of the puree once softened and strained.
Butter
Carries the onion in frying and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the puree when cooked with butter into a roux and blended in.
Onion
Adds savory flavor as it softens in butter without browning.

The step that matters

Cook the roux without browning. Flour and onion that brown take on a darker, bitter taste and a different color, and the flour thickens less well. Cooking gently keeps the puree light and smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, celery, sugar, butter, onion, 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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