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Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made with onion, garlic, celery, bay leaves, parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine onion, garlic, celery, bay leaves, and parsley in a pot.

  2. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook over medium heat.

  4. Stir occasionally until the juice thickens.

Finish and store

  1. Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove solids.

  2. Use immediately or store for later.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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, moisture and flavor that cook down into the sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries aroma and gives the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic base flavor as it softens.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during cooking.
Celery
Adds subtle savory, vegetal flavor to the aromatic base.

The step that matters

Stir occasionally until the juice thickens. Tomatoes release a lot of water, and cooking slowly over medium heat lets it evaporate so the sauce thickens. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, celery, parsley, olive, pepper, tomato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, celery, parsley, olive, pepper, tomato. 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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