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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with tomatoes, butter, flour, baking soda, salt, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place tomatoes in a pot and bring to a boil, keeping them boiling until needed.

  2. About 10 minutes before serving, melt butter in a frying pan.

Make the soup

  1. Add flour to the melted butter and stir until thoroughly cooked but not browned.

  2. Stir baking soda, salt, and pepper into the boiling tomatoes.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the tomatoes, then pour in the milk.

Finish

  1. Strain the mixture through a wire sieve and serve hot.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Tomatoes
Form the base of the soup, providing most of its liquid, body, and bright acidity.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the soup.
Flour
Cooked with the butter into a roux, it thickens the soup as its starch swells in liquid.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acidity, mellowing the flavor and helping protect the milk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a softer body, turning the tomato base into a smooth soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the hot tomatoes. Tomatoes are acidic, and when hot acidic liquid meets milk it can curdle the proteins. Baking soda offsets some acidity, and keeping the heat moderate helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, 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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