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Tomata, or Love-apple Sauce

A tomato sauce made with tomatoes, capsicum, beef gravy, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomata, or Love-apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Remove the stalks from the tomatoes and cut them in half.

  2. Squeeze out all the water and seeds.

Cook the sauce

  1. Place the tomatoes in a saucepan with the capsicum and beef gravy.

  2. Cook on low heat for 1 hour until melted.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan.

  4. Add a little white pepper and coarse sea salt, and simmer for a few minutes.

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. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  3. Capsicum + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,370 recipes

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

  4. Capsicum + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + white peppertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe red tomatoes
Form the main body of the sauce, providing moisture, acidity and bulk that cook down into it.
Capsicum
Adds sweetness and vegetable flavour that blends into the tomato base as it cooks.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and body, rounding out the flavour of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cook on low heat for 1 hour until melted. Low, gentle heat lets the tomatoes break down slowly without scorching on the bottom of the pan. Too much heat can burn the sugars and leave a bitter, cooked taste, while cooking long enough softens the solids so they can be sieved smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, capsicum, beef):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, capsicum, beef. 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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