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Tomato Butter

A sauce made from tomatoes, butter, light gravy, lemon juice, arrowroot, salt, pepper, and carmine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stew pan, combine tomatoes, butter, light gravy, lemon juice, and the arrowroot mixture.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and red pepper. Add a few drops of carmine.

  3. Cook on low heat for 15 to 20 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Rewarm and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, flavour and acidity of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body without cloudiness.
Light gravy
Supplies savoury liquid that carries the tomato flavour and loosens the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook on low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. Arrowroot thickens when heated but can break down or turn thin if the sauce boils hard or is held too long. Gentle heat keeps the starch stable and the butter from separating.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, lemon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, lemon, 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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