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TomaTo Soup

A creamy tomato soup made with tomatoes, milk, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

TomaTo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew tomatoes until soft enough to strain easily.

  2. Use the strained juice.

Make the milk mixture

  1. Heat milk in a double boiler.

  2. Melt butter.

  3. Add flour.

  4. Gradually add hot milk.

  5. Cook for ten minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Add baking soda to strained tomatoes.

  2. Let the gas pass off.

  3. Combine tomatoes with the milk mixture.

  4. Serve with croutons or crackers.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. 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
Provides the main flavour, acidity and liquid base of the soup.
Milk
Adds creamy body and richness as the main liquid of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and is cooked with flour to form a roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk by forming a starch-based roux with the melted butter.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda to the strained tomatoes. Baking soda reacts with the tomato's acid and releases carbon dioxide, so letting the gas pass off first prevents foaming. Neutralising some acidity also helps keep the milk from curdling when the two are combined.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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