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Tomato Sauce

A savory sauce made with tomatoes, butter, bacon, shallot, herbs, stock, and meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and shallot work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 583 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes and chop the shallot.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the bacon, tomatoes, shallot, and herbs.

  2. Cook without browning for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the stock and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Return to the saucepan, add the meat glaze, and dissolve.

  6. Season to taste and 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. Tomato + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,438 recipes

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

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 fresh acidity that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the sauce as it melts into the pan.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the butter as it cooks.
Stock
Adds liquid so the tomatoes can soften and simmer into a sauce.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated savoury depth and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook without browning. Keeping the heat gentle stops the butter, bacon and shallot from browning, which would make the sauce taste bitter and darker than intended.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, meat. 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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