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Tomato Sauce

A savory sauce made with tomatoes, shallots, ham, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,476 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the diced ham and chopped shallots; cook without browning.

  3. Add the bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns, and sliced tomatoes.

  4. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir well.

  5. Boil for about 20 minutes, or until the sauce is well reduced.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce through a fine cloth, reheat, and season to taste before serving.

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.

  1. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and stirs into the mixture.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the sauce.
Shallots
Build a mild aromatic sweetness in the base.

The step that matters

Boil until well reduced. Boiling evaporates water so the sauce thickens and its flavour concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while the flour needs enough cooking to lose its raw taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, thyme, butter, flour, ham, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Okraabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Mustardabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, thyme, butter, flour, ham, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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