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Spanish Sauce

A pepper and tomato sauce thickened with flour, cooked in bacon fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Spanish Sauce

Why it works: Tomato and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onion and green and red peppers.

  2. If using fresh peppers, parboil them for five minutes to reduce their strong flavor, if desired.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, simmer the chopped onion and peppers in the fat for five minutes.

  2. Add the water and canned tomatoes, and cook until the onion and peppers are tender.

  3. Blend the flour with 1 cup of water, then add to the pan to thicken the sauce.

  4. Cook for five more minutes to blend the flavors.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 it cooks with the liquid.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and tomato flavor of the sauce.
Onion
Softens and adds savory sweetness to the sauce base.
Bacon or other fat
Carries flavor and helps soften the onion and peppers.

The step that matters

Blend the flour with water before adding it to the pan. Flour added dry to hot liquid clumps and stays lumpy. Mixing it with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly so it thickens the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, tomato, flour, mushroom. 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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