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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, hot water, onion, butter, flour, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Cook the soup

  1. Cook the tomatoes with hot water and onion for one hour.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together, then add to the soup and season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the well-scalded milk.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Form the base of the soup and give it its body and acidic, bright flavor.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the tomato flavor, giving a smoother texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring in the milk just before serving. Milk proteins can curdle when they meet hot acidic tomatoes and when boiled. Adding the scalded milk at the end and keeping the soup hot, not boiling, helps keep it smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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