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Mock Oyster Soup

A soup made with tomatoes, milk, baking soda, pepper, salt, butter, and served over crushed crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Mock Oyster Soup

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 ↓

Mock Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water.

  2. Boil down 1 jar of ripe tomatoes to 1 quart.

  3. In the tomatoes, add 1 teaspoon of baking soda after boiling.

  4. Once the tomatoes stop foaming, add the boiled milk.

  5. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup over crushed crackers.

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.

  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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the soup base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, rich body to the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acidity and causes foaming when added.
Crushed crackers
Add starch and texture when the soup is poured over them.

The step that matters

Adding the milk after the foaming stops. Baking soda reacts with the tomato acid and foams; adding milk before the foaming settles can cause it to overflow or curdle in the acidic mixture.

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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