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Tomato Sauce

A savory tomato sauce made with bacon, butter, onion, tomatoes, flour, stock, herbs, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Add bacon, butter, and chopped onion to a stew pan and fry for a few minutes.

  2. Add sliced tomatoes and stir over the heat for a little longer.

  3. Mix flour with a little cold stock, then gradually stir in the remaining stock.

  4. Add peppercorns, savory herbs, and parsley and allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Remove the herbs.

Strain and finish

  1. Rub the sauce through a sieve.

  2. Return the sauce to the pan.

  3. Season with salt, sugar, and pepper.

  4. Finish with a pat of fresh butter.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Bacon
Adds savory, smoky flavor as it renders into the fat used for frying the onion.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity, and fresh tomato flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavors of the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor, and a final pat gives the sauce a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring in the stock after mixing the flour. Flour mixed first with a little cold stock disperses evenly; adding all the liquid at once can form lumps that are hard to smooth out once the starch is hydrated.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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