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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, butter, flour, onion, parsley, salt, bay leaf, pepper, mace, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients except flour and butter in a pot and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture or run it through a press, then return it to the heat.

  3. Rub the flour and butter together, then stir it into the tomatoes until well mixed and thickened.

  4. If the sauce lumps, beat it with a wire whisk.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 acidic, fruity flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps blend the flour smoothly into the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it cooks into the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. Flour clumps if dropped in raw or added too fast. Rubbing it with butter first and stirring it in until well mixed helps it disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, onion, flour, parsley, pepper, 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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