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Tomato Sauce, Brown

A tomato sauce made with onions, carrots, butter, brown sauce, stock, and seasonings, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,555 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and carrot; brown well.

  3. Add the broken-up tomatoes, stock, and seasoning; boil until the mixture can be sieved.

  4. Return the mixture to the pan with the brown sauce; bring to a boil.

  5. Season to taste with more salt and add a squeeze of lemon juice.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce once cooked down and sieved.
Onion
Browning in the butter builds sweetness and savoury depth as the base flavour.
Butter
Fat for browning the onion and carrot, carrying flavour and adding richness.
Brown sauce
Adds body and a deep, roasted savoury character to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onion and carrot well. Deep browning caramelises the sugars and creates savoury, roasted flavour that a pale sauté cannot provide. Cooking until well coloured, without scorching, gives the sauce its characteristic depth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, sauce, carrot, sugar, pepper. 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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