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Tomato Soup or Mock Hock Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, sugar, spices, butter, flour, milk, wine, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup or Mock Hock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the tomatoes in a pot.

  2. Mash the tomatoes through a sieve.

  3. Mix sugar, nutmeg, and mace, then add to the tomatoes.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix butter and flour, then stir into the tomatoes.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil again, stirring until it bubbles.

Finish and serve

  1. A quarter of an hour before serving, add the milk and stir until it boils nicely.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the wine.

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

  1. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the base of the soup, providing bulk, acidity and flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the tomato flavour.
Wine
Adds a bright, aromatic note stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Once the milk is in, the soup must be brought just to a boil and no further, because prolonged or vigorous boiling can cause dairy to curdle, especially in acidic tomato soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  3. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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