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Cream of Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with cornstarch and butter, finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream of Tomato Soup

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cream of Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Cook the tomatoes, onion, garlic, bay leaf, salt, paprika, and sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with the fat and stir into the boiling tomato mixture.

  3. Boil for 3 minutes and then strain the mixture.

  4. Allow the strained mixture to cool completely.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, combine with the cold milk.

  2. Heat in a double boiler and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 and tomato flavour of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cornstarch blend smoothly into the hot tomato mixture.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and mellows the tomato's acidity.

The step that matters

Stirring cornstarch into the boiling tomato mixture. Cornstarch clumps if added without being mixed with fat first or if it is dumped in. Mixing it with the fat and stirring it in while the mixture boils lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly into a smooth soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, garlic, sugar, butter, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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