Name: Tomato Puree
Ingredients: 2 quarts peeled, ripe tomatoes, sliced (or 2 cans); 1 quart rich soup stock; salt to taste; pepper to taste; hot water (if needed)

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a kettle, combine the tomatoes and soup stock.
Cook slowly for 1 hour.

Strain and season

Strain the mixture through a sieve and return it to the kettle.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
If the puree is too thick, add hot water until desired consistency is reached.

Serve

Serve with crisp wafers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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, flavor and moisture that the puree is built from.
Soup stock: Adds savory depth and liquid, helping the tomatoes break down into a smooth puree.

“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.