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Tomato Bouillon

A tomato-based broth thickened with butter, served hot with a splash of boiling milk and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Tomato Bouillon

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes in a pot.

  2. After boiling, add the baking soda and strain the tomatoes.

  3. Stir in the butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Keep the mixture hot without boiling.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, stir in the boiling milk.

  2. Serve in cups with a teaspoon of whipped cream on top.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the body and main flavour of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, softening the taste and reducing curdling risk with milk.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling milk at the end. Tomato is acidic, and hot milk that is combined with acid or boiled for long can curdle or separate. Keeping the base hot without boiling and adding the milk just before serving helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, milk, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, cream. 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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