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Cream Tomato Soup

A hearty tomato soup made with beef, tomatoes, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream Tomato Soup

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef, cold water, and salt in a pot; bring to a boil, skimming often.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Add the tomatoes and stew for 1.5 hours.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve back into the pot and boil for 10 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour, then thicken the soup with this mixture.

  2. Add a dash of cayenne pepper.

  3. Stir in the hot sweet cream before serving.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lean beef
Simmers into the broth, giving it a savory, meaty body.
Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity, and tomato flavor once stewed and sieved.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style mixture that thickens the soup.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and mellows the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Thicken with the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Mixing it with butter first coats the grains so they disperse smoothly and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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