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Tomato Puree

A tomato soup thickened with milk, sugar, and baking soda, finished with browned bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tomato Puree

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

Make the soup

  1. Heat the tomatoes and strain them through a sieve.

  2. Add the milk, sugar, salt, and baking soda, then boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the light bread into 4‑inch squares and brown them in a little lard.

  2. 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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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
Form the acidic liquid base that gives the soup its main flavor and body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the sharp tomato flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which carries flavor and smooths the texture.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acid, mellowing the taste and changing the soup's pH.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.
Light bread
Browned pieces add a crisp, toasty texture when dropped into the hot soup.

The step that matters

Add the milk and baking soda, then boil. Baking soda reacts with the tomato acid and releases gas, so it can foam up and may cause the milk to curdle if the soup is boiled too hard or too long.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. 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.

“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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