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Sauce

Brown Onion Sauce with Tomatoes

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, onion, vegetable stock, and tomato purée.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Onion Sauce with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the margarine in a hot saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook until lightly browned.

  3. Stir in the chopped onion and cook until softened.

  4. Gradually add the vegetable stock, stirring constantly.

  5. Add the tomato purée and bring to a boil.

  6. Simmer for 10 minutes, then serve.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted margarine, giving body to the liquid.
Tomato purée
Adds concentrated tomato flavour, colour and body to the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the fat.
Margarine
Provides fat that carries flavour and helps cook the flour into a roux.

The step that matters

Gradually add the vegetable stock, stirring constantly. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the starch in the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, onion. 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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