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Creamed Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with milk, cornflour, and butter, sweetened with sugar and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Creamed Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, warm the butter.

  2. Add the cornflour and mix to form a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the milk, then stir in the baking soda and sugar.

  4. Bring to a boil.

Cook the tomatoes and combine

  1. In a separate pot, boil the tomatoes in 1 cup of water.

  2. Just before serving, mix the tomato mixture with the milk mixture.

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 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. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and gives it its smooth body.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralises the tomato's acidity, softening its sharp taste and keeping the milk from curdling.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and colour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the milk. Baking soda raises the pH of the sauce, which helps stop the acidic tomatoes from curdling the milk when they are combined. Adding it to the milk sauce before the tomatoes is what protects the texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, 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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