Name: Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: 2 ripe tomatoes; Brown sauce (cheap)

Why it works: Tomato and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,469 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

2 ripe tomatoes
Brown sauce (cheap)

Directions

Boil the ripe tomatoes until soft.
Rub the boiled tomatoes through a strainer to remove the skins and seeds.
Add the strained tomatoes to the brown sauce and mix well.

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.

Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together5,469 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes: Provide the main flavor and body of the sauce once softened and strained.
Brown sauce: Forms the base of the sauce and carries the tomato flavor.

“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.