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Tomato Sauce

A basic tomato sauce made with ripe tomatoes, onion, herbs, butter, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt, pepper, bay leaf, sliced onion, parsley, thyme, and enough water to cover the tomatoes.

  3. Add 2 or 3 drops of vinegar.

  4. Place the saucepan on low heat and stir for 15 minutes.

  5. Set a sieve over a bowl and pour the tomatoes into the sieve.

  6. Rub the tomatoes through the sieve to extract the sauce.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. If desired, add flour and stir with a wooden spoon.

  3. Gradually pour in the tomato sauce while stirring continuously over low heat.

  4. Let the sauce thicken uncovered.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add a few drops of stock.

  6. Serve in a sauceboat.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, acidity and flavour of the sauce as they break down.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid when stirred.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the tomato sauce while stirring continuously. Adding the sauce slowly while stirring keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth, preventing lumps. Constant stirring over low heat also helps the sauce thicken evenly without scorching.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, parsley, thyme, vinegar, butter, flour. 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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