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Sauce

Tomato Sauce for Steaks and Chops

A tomato-based sauce with carrot, onion, cloves, mace, salt, and pepper for steaks and chops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tomato Sauce for Steaks and Chops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the tomatoes, carrot, and onion.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the tomatoes, carrot, onion, cloves, and mace.

  3. Season with salt and black pepper.

  4. Simmer until the vegetables are tender and the sauce thickens.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 and acidity of the sauce as they break down and thicken.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens during simmering.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body as it softens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Simmering long enough softens the vegetables fully and lets the sauce reduce and thicken. Stopping early leaves a thin, raw-tasting sauce with firm vegetable pieces.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, carrot, clove, pepper, onion):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, clove, 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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