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Meatless Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with tomatoes, water, baking soda, milk, butter, salt, pepper, and served with 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

Make the soup

  1. Combine tomatoes and water in a pot and stew until soft.

  2. Add baking soda and allow it to effervesce.

  3. Stir in boiling milk, salt, butter, and pepper.

  4. Add a little rolled cracker and boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Butter + peppertop 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 and the acidic tomato flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, mellow texture to the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes the tomato acid, softening the flavour and helping keep the milk from curdling.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a silkier mouthfeel.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and add starch, thickening the soup slightly as they boil.

The step that matters

Stir in boiling milk. Milk proteins can curdle when they meet acid. Tomatoes are acidic, so the baking soda must be added and given time to neutralize the acid first. Adding the boiling milk at that point keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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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