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Cream of Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with a roux of butter and flour, seasoned with salt, white pepper, and baking soda.

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 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomatoes.

  3. Add baking soda while hot.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter until it foams.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and pepper, stirring until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk, 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor and the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavor into the white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and milk.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and forms the body of the white sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acidity, reducing tartness and helping prevent curdling.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot milk, stirring constantly.. Adding milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour and butter blended, so the sauce stays smooth instead of forming lumps as the starch thickens.

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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