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Tomato Sauce

A simple tomato sauce made with stewed tomatoes, onion, bay leaf, mace, parsley, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the stewed tomatoes, chopped onion, bay leaf, mace, and minced parsley in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Melt the butter in a separate pan, then add the flour and mix until smooth.

  4. Press the tomatoes through a sieve and add them to the butter and flour mixture.

  5. Stir until it boils, then season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

Stewed tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic, fruity flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until smooth. Flour clumps if added to hot fat without thorough mixing, and lumps are hard to remove later. Cooking the butter and flour together also helps the starch thicken the sauce evenly once the tomatoes are added.

Swap the mace

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

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

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