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Sauce

Canned Tomatoes

A sauce made from canned tomatoes, butter, flour, cloves, onion, sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Canned Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the tomatoes, cloves, and onion for 10 minutes.

  2. In a separate pan, heat the butter, add the flour, and stir over heat until smooth and brown.

  3. Strain the tomatoes through a colander and add the flour mixture.

  4. Cook for a few more minutes, then season with pepper, salt, and sugar.

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidity of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it cooks into the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until brown. Stirring the flour in butter over heat cooks out its raw taste and builds a nutty, browned flavour. Stopping too early leaves a pasty taste, while cooking too long can scorch and turn bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, onion, sugar, 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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