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Sauce

French Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made with onions, butter, tomatoes, shallot, garlic, salt, pepper, and optional butter or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

French Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, combine the chopped onions and butter. Cook gently without burning.

  2. Add the tomatoes, shallot, and cloves. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, adding more butter as needed.

  4. Allow the mixture to simmer for 1 hour.

Finish

  1. Pass the sauce through a wire sieve.

  2. If too thick, add boiling water to reach desired consistency.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and build the sweet, savory base of the sauce as they cook in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor, thickening into a sauce as they simmer down.

The step that matters

Cook the onions gently in butter. Over high heat the butter and onions can scorch, leaving bitter flavors that carry through the whole sauce. Gentle heat softens the onions and builds sweetness without browning them.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, egg, butter, shallot, clove, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, butter, shallot, clove, pepper. 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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