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Tomato Sauce

A pork-based tomato sauce with carrots, onions, and bouquet garni, simmered with stock and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the pork with the butter in a tall, thick-bottomed saucepan until nearly melted.

  2. Add the carrots, onions, and bouquet garni.

  3. Cook and stir the vegetables.

  4. Stir in the flour.

  5. Cook until the flour begins to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the tomatoes and white stock and mix well.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add the salt, sugar, pepper, and a crushed clove of garlic.

  4. Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the sauce through a sieve or tammy.

  2. Bring to a boil while stirring continuously.

  3. Pour into a tureen.

  4. Butter the surface to prevent a skin from forming.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot fat and liquid.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, colour and acidic tang of the sauce.
White stock
Supplies the liquid and savoury depth that carries the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, mellow flavour to the base.
Onions
Build an aromatic, lightly sweet base as they soften in the fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cook until the flour begins to brown. Cooking the flour in fat drives off its raw, pasty taste and adds colour and nutty flavour. Taking it too far scorches the starch, making the sauce bitter and dark.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, onion, flour, butter, sugar, pepper. 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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