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Tomato Sauce

A savory tomato sauce made with bacon, butter, onion, tomatoes, stock, herbs, and finished with butter or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a stewpan, combine the bacon, butter, and onion, and fry until slightly softened.

  2. Add the sliced tomatoes and stir for a few minutes.

  3. Mix the flour with a little cold stock, then gradually stir in the remaining stock.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the peppercorns, savory herbs, and parsley, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the herbs and strain the sauce through a sieve.

Season and finish

  1. Return the sauce to the stewpan and season with salt, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Finish with a pat of butter or double cream, but do not allow to boil again.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

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

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.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour when fried with the bacon and onion.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky flavour to the base as it fries.
Stock
Forms the liquid that the tomatoes and flour cook into a sauce.

The step that matters

Finish with butter or cream off the boil. Boiling after adding butter or cream can cause the emulsion to break, leaving the sauce greasy and separated. Keeping it hot but not boiling keeps it smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, flour, parsley, 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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