Skip to main content
Sauce

Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, shallot, ham or bacon, peppercorns, herbs, vinegar, butter, and mace, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,374 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and cover with a lid.

  2. Simmer gently until everything is tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. If needed, add a little cochineal to enhance the color.

  5. Remove any fat from the sauce.

  6. Reheat the sauce 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. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Shallot + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Lean ham or bacon
Adds savory, salty depth as it cooks slowly into the sauce.
Shallot
Adds mild aromatic sweetness that builds flavor during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until everything is tender. Gentle heat softens the tomatoes and aromatics fully while keeping the liquid from boiling hard, which can break down the sauce and make it cloudy or uneven in texture before it is strained.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, shallot, ham, vinegar, butter. 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.

More tomato sauce recipes

Green 40Beef in 13Eggs in 13French 8Sweetbreads in 7Spiced 6 See all 512 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes