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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from simmered tomatoes, onions, herbs, butter, and flour, served in a sauceboat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 9,057 recipes mention both. 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 enough water to cover the tomatoes and place the saucepan over low heat.

  3. Stir the mixture for 15 minutes.

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

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

Make the sauce

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

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the melted butter while stirring with a wooden spoon.

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

  4. Let the sauce thicken uncovered, adding water if it becomes too thick.

  5. 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,370 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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 once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly in the melted butter before the liquid is added.

The step that matters

Gradually pouring the tomato sauce into the butter and flour. Adding liquid slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, which prevents lumps from forming in the thickened sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, parsley, thyme, vinegar, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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