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Tomato Buullion

A clear tomato-based broth made with tomatoes, water, sugar, salt, cloves, peppercorns, butter, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Buullion

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bouillon

  1. In a pot, combine tomatoes, water, sugar, salt, cloves, black pepper, and onion if desired.

  2. Add butter and bring to a boil.

  3. Cook for a while, then strain the mixture through a cheesecloth bag.

  4. Return the strained liquid to the stove and add a dash of cayenne pepper.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 bouillon.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounder, richer mouthfeel to the liquid.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, clove, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, clove, 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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