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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with tomatoes, garlic, onion, bay leaf, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and strain

  1. Cook the tomatoes, garlic, onion, bay leaf, and clove together for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Rub the flour and butter together until smooth.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes to the flour and butter mixture.

  3. Cook over moderate heat until the sauce thickens.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the liquid base and provide the main tomato flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks by absorbing liquid and swelling its starch.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the flour blend into a smooth paste.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and some sweetness as it cooks with the tomatoes.
Garlic
Adds aroma that mellows and deepens during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook over moderate heat until the sauce thickens. Flour thickens only as its starch swells in heated liquid, and it needs enough cooking to lose its raw, pasty taste. Heating too fast can scorch the bottom or leave lumps, so keep the heat moderate and stir.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, garlic, onion, flour, butter. 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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