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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, water, sweet milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, salt, pepper, baking soda, and rolled crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil water and tomatoes together for 20 minutes.

  2. Mix butter and flour together until smooth. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  3. Stir in baking soda and let it foam up.

  4. Add sweet milk and rolled crackers, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main body, acidity, and flavor of the soup.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the tomato acidity.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the base.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with the butter and liquid.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, causing foaming and reducing sharpness.
Rolled crackers
Soak up liquid and add body and thickness to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda to the tomatoes. Baking soda reacts with the tomato acid and foams vigorously, so it should be stirred in slowly. Adding it too fast can cause the soup to overflow and can leave a soapy taste if unevenly mixed.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper. 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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