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Meatless Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made by stewing tomatoes, adding baking soda, and mixing with milk, salt, pepper, butter, and rolled crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Meatless Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes and water in a pot.

  2. Stew the mixture until the tomatoes are soft.

  3. Add baking soda and allow to effervesce.

Make the milk base

  1. Heat the milk in another pot.

  2. Season the milk with salt, pepper, and butter.

Combine and serve

  1. Strain the stewed tomatoes.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes to the milk.

  3. Stir in rolled crackers before serving.

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidic flavor and color of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess, smooth texture and mild sweetness to the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acid, which helps reduce curdling in the milk.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the soup slightly as they soften.

The step that matters

Adding the tomatoes to the milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make milk curdle when the two are combined. The baking soda added earlier neutralizes much of that acid, which is why it matters that it was added and allowed to effervesce before this step.

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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