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Soup

Cream-of-Tomato Soup

A soup made from stewed tomatoes, flour, butter, and milk, finished with baking soda and white pepper.

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 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream-of-Tomato Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes slowly for 30 to 60 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomatoes and add baking soda while hot.

Make the soup

  1. Make a white sauce with the flour and butter.

  2. Add the tomato juice to the white sauce.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,226 recipes

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

  5. Malt + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, acidity, and liquid base of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, making the soup milder and less likely to curdle.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that gives the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base of the white sauce with flour.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid of the white sauce, giving the soup its smooth texture.

The step that matters

Add the tomato juice to the white sauce.. Tomato juice is acidic and can curdle a milk-based white sauce if it is added carelessly or to a sauce that is too hot. Neutralizing the acid first with baking soda helps keep the sauce smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, malt, 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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