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Tomata, or Love Apple Sauce

A tomato sauce made with tomatoes, capsicum, beef gravy, white pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomata, or Love Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Remove the stalks from the tomatoes and cut them in half.

  2. Squeeze the tomatoes to remove the water and seeds.

Cook and strain

  1. Place the tomatoes in a saucepan with the capsicum and beef gravy.

  2. Cook on low heat for about 1 hour until melted.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan.

Season and simmer

  1. Add white pepper and coarse sea salt, and let simmer for a few minutes.

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 + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

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

  2. Capsicum + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe red tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce as they break down.
Capsicum (bell pepper)
Adds sweet, vegetal flavour that rounds out the tomatoes.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook on low heat until melted. Low, slow heat lets the tomatoes break down gradually and develop flavour without scorching on the bottom of the pan. Too much heat can burn the sugars and leave a bitter, stuck-on taste.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, capsicum, pepper, beef):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, capsicum, pepper, beef. 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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