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Cream Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with milk, flour, and butter, flavored with sugar, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream Tomato Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the tomatoes and water in a pot and boil until the tomatoes are broken down, adding a pinch of baking soda.

  2. Pour the mixture into a quart of boiling sweet milk.

  3. Dissolve the flour and sugar in a little milk.

  4. Stir the mixture into the soup and let it boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and strain

  1. Add butter, salt, and red pepper to taste.

  2. Strain the soup through cheesecloth.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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
Provide the main body, flavor and acidity of the soup as they break down.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the soup its smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk slightly, giving the soup more body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pouring the tomatoes into boiling milk. Tomatoes are acidic and can curdle milk when they meet it. Pouring the mixture into already boiling milk, with the pinch of baking soda used earlier to lower acidity, helps keep the soup smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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