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Sauce

Tomato Cream Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, celery, onion, bay leaf, baking soda, salt, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add seasoning to tomatoes and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add baking soda and then mix in the white 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the acidic base that gives the sauce its body and bright tomato flavour.
Medium white sauce
Adds fat and starch for a creamy, smooth texture and a richer body.
Baking soda
Neutralises some of the tomatoes' acidity, softening sharpness and helping the sauce stay smooth.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and background sweetness as it cooks with the tomatoes.
Celery
Adds aromatic, vegetal flavour to the tomato base.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the tomatoes' acid and fizzes. Adding too much leaves a soapy, flat taste, so measure it carefully and mix it in before the white sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, tomato, sauce. 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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