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Tomato Puree

A smooth tomato sauce made by simmering tomatoes with aromatics, then blending and sieving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Tomato Puree

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine the tomatoes and water or stock in a granite-ware saucepan.

  2. Add the bay leaf, parsley, celery, peppercorns, and sugar.

  3. Simmer until the tomatoes are thoroughly soft.

Make the roux

  1. Heat the butter in another saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and fry without browning.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook without browning.

  4. Add enough of the tomato mixture to the roux to dilute it.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the roux with the rest of the tomatoes.

  2. Season with salt.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve or strainer.

  4. Heat the puree again before serving.

  5. Sprinkle with small croutons.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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 flavour of the puree once softened and strained.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour and adds richness to the finished puree.
Flour
Thickens the puree when cooked with butter into a roux.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic flavour when fried gently in butter.
Water or stock
Provides the liquid in which the tomatoes soften and simmer.

The step that matters

Cook the roux without browning. Frying the onion and flour only until pale keeps the flavour mild and lets the flour thicken smoothly. Browning gives a toasted, bitter taste and a darker colour, and dilution with tomato then becomes harder to do without lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, celery, sugar, butter, onion, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, celery, sugar, butter, onion, flour. 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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