Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce made with tomatoes, water, onion, salt, red pepper, sugar, allspice, cloves, peppercorns, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, water, onion, salt, red pepper, sugar, allspice, cloves, and peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Cook until tomatoes are soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix butter and flour until smooth.

  5. Add the strained tomato mixture to the butter and flour, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over hot macaroni and serve immediately.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 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 once cooked and strained.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and liquid.

The step that matters

Add the strained tomato mixture to the butter and flour. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid; the butter and flour must be smooth before the liquid goes in, or lumps form and the sauce stays thin or grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, allspice, clove, 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.

More tomato sauce recipes

Green 40Beef in 13Eggs in 13French 8Sweetbreads in 7Spiced 6 See all 512 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes