Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce flavored with cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and cayenne, reduced to a thick consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

  2. Boil down the mixture until it reduces to 1 pint.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and bulk that reduce into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture until it reduces to 1 pint. Reducing concentrates the flavors and thickens the sauce as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while boiling too long can scorch the sugar and tomatoes on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cinnamon, sugar, clove, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cinnamon, sugar, clove, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes