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Sauce

Tomato Cream

A creamy tomato sauce made with tomatoes, butter, crackers, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the tomatoes until tender and strain them.

  2. Put the strained tomatoes back on the fire and add a pinch of baking soda, salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Stir in the rolled crackers.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the scalding hot milk.

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.

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. Butter + milktop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, softening its sharpness and keeping the milk from curdling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Rolled crackers
Thicken the sauce as their starch absorbs liquid and swells.
Milk
Adds creaminess, mild sweetness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the scalding hot milk off the heat. Milk added to acidic tomatoes can curdle if it is too cold or the mixture is too hot. Adding it off the heat and keeping it hot, not boiling, helps it blend smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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