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Tomato Soup

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

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

Make the milk base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk to create a smooth paste.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly to thicken.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and a little butter.

Add the tomatoes and serve

  1. Stew the tomatoes until soft, then drain partially and strain through a colander.

  2. Pour the strained tomatoes into the thickened milk mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil once more and serve.

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

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavours.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body.
Fine tomatoes
Provide the main tomato flavour and, once strained, the smooth body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the boiling milk. Flour lumps if it is added dry or to hot liquid without being first mixed into a smooth paste with cold liquid. Stirring constantly while adding it spreads the starch evenly so the milk thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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