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Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, butter, onion, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the base

  1. Combine tomatoes, parsley, water, butter, garlic cloves, chopped onion, and allspice berries in a pot and cook for 20 minutes.

Brown and thicken

  1. In a separate pan, brown the onion in butter.

  2. Add flour and seasonings to the browned onion.

  3. Gradually stir in the tomatoes.

Finish

  1. Cook until there is no taste of raw starch, then strain the sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Its starch swells when cooked, thickening the sauce and giving it body.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid, acidity and fruity flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor while the onion browns.
Chopped onion
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory aroma into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until there is no taste of raw starch. Flour starch must be heated long enough to swell and thicken the sauce fully. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, so keep simmering until it is gone before straining.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

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