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Cream of Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with a white sauce and seasoned with baking soda, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Tomato Soup

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 ↓

Cream of Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

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

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

Make the white sauce

  1. In a separate pan, heat the butter until it foams, then add the flour, salt, and pepper, stirring until smooth.

  2. Slowly add the hot milk to the flour mixture, stirring constantly.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the hot tomato juice with the white sauce and 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.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce by gelatinizing its starch.
Milk
Forms the body of the white sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, softening the sharp taste and reducing curdling risk.

The step that matters

Combine the hot tomato juice with the white sauce. Tomato acid can curdle milk proteins if the two are mixed carelessly or cold. Keeping both hot and adding them together, with the baking soda already neutralizing acidity, helps the soup stay smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, flour, milk. 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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