Name: Tomato Puree
Ingredients: 1 quart canned tomatoes; 1 pint milk; 1 pound butter; 12 cloves; 2 teaspoons sugar; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda; light bread, cut into 1-inch squares; lard for browning

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomato Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the tomatoes and strain through a sieve.
Add the milk, sugar, salt, and baking soda dissolved in water.
Boil for 10 minutes.
Brown the light bread squares in a little lard.
Drop the browned bread into the soup just before serving.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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

Swap the clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Thymefits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, milk, butter, sugar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.