Name: Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: ½ can of tomatoes; 1 slice of onion; 1 sprig of parsley; 3 cloves; 3 peppercorns; a bit of bay leaf; ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt

Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,768 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the tomatoes with the onion, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and salt for 15 minutes.
Pass the mixture through a sieve.

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.

Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,474 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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, moisture and acidity of the sauce as they simmer down.
Onion: Adds savoury aroma and background sweetness as it softens in the simmering liquid.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

Garlicbetter flavor fit
Thymebetter flavor fit
Cuminbetter flavor fit
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, parsley. 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.