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Tomato Sauce for Keeping

A preserved tomato sauce made by baking tomatoes, adding vinegar, spices, and lemon juice, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion 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 for Keeping

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place ripe tomatoes in a jar with a cover and bake until tender, ideally overnight.

  3. Check tomatoes in the morning; they should be soft enough to skin easily.

Make the sauce

  1. Measure the pulp and add the specified amounts of vinegar and other ingredients.

  2. Chop garlic, shallot, capsicum, onion, and gherkins very finely.

  3. Boil the mixture until everything is tender.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Add lemon juice to the mixture.

  6. Boil again until the sauce thickens to a cream-like consistency, stirring continuously.

Bottle

  1. Once cooled, bottle the sauce, cork it well, and seal the corks.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Capsicum + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pulp, which softens and breaks down into the sauce body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows during long boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out moisture and preserve it.
Lemon juice
Adds extra acidity and brightness to balance the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil again until the sauce thickens. Continuous stirring prevents the sugars and solids in the tomato from scorching on the base of the pan, while reduction concentrates the sauce into a thick, cream-like consistency.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, garlic, shallot, capsicum, pepper, onion):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, garlic, shallot, capsicum, pepper, onion. 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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