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Delicious Soup

A tomato soup thickened with crackers and flavored with milk, butter, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Delicious Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Stew the peeled tomatoes with baking soda until thoroughly cooked.

  2. In a separate pot, bring the whole milk to a boil.

  3. Pour the cooked tomatoes into the boiling milk, stirring well.

  4. Let the mixture boil together for about 15 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Season with red pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter.

  2. Just before serving, thicken the soup with pounded crackers.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Peeled tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the soup.
Whole milk
Forms the creamy, rich liquid base of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, softening its sharpness and helping the soup stay smooth.
Pounded crackers
Absorb liquid and swell, thickening the soup just before serving.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pour the tomatoes into the boiling milk, stirring well. Acidic tomatoes can curdle hot milk when they meet it. Stirring constantly while pouring disperses the acid quickly, reducing the chance that the milk separates into curds.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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