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Italian Tomato Sauce

A simmered tomato sauce with garlic, herbs, onions, butter, flour, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,874 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Italian Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Simmer together the tomatoes, garlic, parsley, mixed herbs, allspice, and peppercorns for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, slowly brown the chopped onions in butter until very dark.

  2. Add the flour to the onions and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the rich stock to the onion mixture, then stir in the cooked tomatoes.

  4. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the salt and rub the sauce through a sieve.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,308 recipes

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

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.
Onions
Brown slowly to add deep, sweet, savoury colour and flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onions and adds richness.
Flour
Mixed with the onions and stock to thicken the sauce.
Rich stock
Adds liquid and savoury depth, loosening the thickened onion mixture into a sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions until very dark. Onions cooked slowly in butter caramelise, developing deep sweet and savoury flavour. Stopping early leaves a flat, raw taste, while burning gives bitterness.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, garlic, parsley, allspice, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Eggplantbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, garlic, parsley, allspice, butter, flour. 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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