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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made with butter, bacon, onion, carrot, tomatoes, herbs, stock, and thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry it with the sliced onion and carrot.

  3. Add the tomatoes and stock, and simmer until tender.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Thicken and serve

  1. If desired, return to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Blend the cornflour with a little cold water and stir it in. Boil for three minutes.

  3. Serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 and flavour of the sauce as they soften and break down.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it renders into the onion and carrot.
Cornflour
Thickens the sauce when boiled with liquid, giving it body.
Stock
Supplies liquid so the tomatoes can simmer until tender.

The step that matters

Boil the cornflour mixture for three minutes. Cornflour only thickens fully when brought to a boil, and it needs enough time at that temperature for the starch granules to swell. Stopping early can leave the sauce thin or faintly starchy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot. 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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