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Tomato Soup

A creamy tomato soup made with butter, onions, canned tomatoes, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and sugar, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté gently for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the canned tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter until smooth, then stir into the tomato mixture.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a bowl, adding the boiling milk as you go.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

  7. Return to the heat and warm gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with croutons.

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Butter
Enriches the soup and, with the flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a smoother, more body-filled texture.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and bulk of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the tomato's sharp acidity.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic depth to the base.

The step that matters

Warm gently without boiling. Once the milk is added, boiling can cause dairy proteins to curdle or scorch on the pan base, and the soup can separate, so keep the heat low.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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