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Sauce

Tomato Sauce

A sauce made with butter, bacon, onion, carrot, tomatoes, rice flour, and stock, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the bacon into small pieces.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the bacon slightly.

  3. Add the sliced onion and carrot, along with the tomatoes, and boil for 4-5 minutes until well reduced.

  4. Stir in the rice flour and add the stock.

Simmer and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt, then simmer slowly for 40-45 minutes.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve and reheat before serving.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the base fat for frying the bacon.
Rice flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidity, reducing to concentrate their flavor.
Bacon
Adds savory, smoky depth as it fries in the butter.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aromatic flavor as it softens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly for 40-45 minutes. Gentle, slow simmering lets the flour fully cook out its raw taste and lets the sauce reduce and deepen in flavor without scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, flour, tomato, pepper, 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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