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Tomato Soup

A soup made from stewed tomatoes, thickened with flour, seasoned with salt, and finished with cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the stewed tomatoes through a colander and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water until smooth, then stir into the boiling tomatoes, ensuring no lumps form.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Just before serving, add a few spoonfuls of cream or a small piece of butter.

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. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stewed tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the tomato liquid as it heats, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling tomatoes. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid dry or unmixed. Mixing it smooth with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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