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Sauce

Tomata or Love-apple Sauce

A sauce made from ripe tomatoes, capsicum, and gravy, seasoned with white pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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, open the fruit, remove the seeds, and press to extract the water.

  2. Place the tomatoes in a saucepan with the capsicum and gravy.

Cook and finish

  1. Simmer gently over low heat for about an hour until the tomatoes are tender and pulpy.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and return to the saucepan.

  3. Add white pepper, salt, butter, and more gravy if the sauce is too thick.

  4. Simmer together for a few more 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. Capsicum + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Capsicum + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,954 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe red tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavour of the sauce as they break down into pulp.
Capsicum
Adds sweet, vegetal flavour that blends into the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the tomatoes until tender and pulpy. Slow, gentle heat softens the tomato structure and breaks it down so the sauce becomes smooth after straining. Rushing with high heat can scorch the bottom and leave the pulp coarse and uneven.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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