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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with canned or fresh tomatoes, boiled with water, soda, milk, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, cajun pepper, flour, and served with crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Johnson, Vt. Congregational church. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut 1 pint of canned tomatoes (or 4 raw ones) finely. Add 1 quart of boiling water and let them boil.

  2. Add 1 teaspoonful soda when it foams.

  3. Immediately add 1 pint of sweet milk, salt, pepper, and a generous piece of butter. Add 1 teaspoonful butter and cook until well done.

  4. When it boils, add small crackers and serve.

By Johnson, Vt. Congregational church. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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
Provide the main body and acidic tomato flavour of the soup.
Sweet milk
Adds richness and creaminess, giving the soup a smooth, mellow body.
Soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, mellowing the flavour and changing its colour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the soda. Soda reacts vigorously with the acid in tomatoes and foams, so it should be added once the tomatoes are boiling and foaming, then followed quickly by the milk. Adding it too early or too late, or letting the milk curdle, can make the soup grainy or uneven.

“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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