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Sauce

A Finer Tom At a Sauce

A tomato sauce stewed with shallots, chilies, ham, and gravy, then sieved and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 9,700 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gently stew the tomatoes with shallots, chilies, ham, and rich gravy.

  2. Stir often until the tomatoes reduce to a smooth pulp.

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

  4. Add a few more spoons of rich gravy or Espagnole and salt if needed.

  5. Boil the sauce, stirring well for 10 minutes, and serve hot.

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. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,700 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + capsicumtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Tomato + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + hamtop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Shallot + hamtop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and break down into a smooth pulp.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the sauce base.
Rich gravy
Adds savoury body and moisture to the sauce.
Lean ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the stewed tomatoes through a sieve removes skins and seeds and breaks down fibres, which gives the sauce its smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the sauce grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

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

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Eggplantbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

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