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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with stock, canned tomatoes, butter, flour, and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the soup stock and tomatoes together.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve, pressing out all but the seeds.

  3. Boil again, then season to taste.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed until smooth.

  2. Serve with croutons.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Soup stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour of the soup.
Tomatoes
Supply the main flavour and a mild acidity to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps form the thickening paste with flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed until smooth. Flour lumps form if starch is added dry or unevenly. Mixing it smoothly with butter first lets the granules disperse, so when heated the starch swells evenly and thickens the soup without clumps.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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