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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with butter, onion, canned tomatoes, flour, milk, salt, pepper, sugar, and 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 base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

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

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

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

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the mixture through a sieve into a bowl, adding the boiling milk as you strain.

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

  3. Return the soup to the heat and warm it without boiling.

  4. 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup and gives it a smoother, more body-rich texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the acidity of the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor from the start of cooking.
Onion
Builds savory aromatic flavor as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Warm the soup without boiling. Once the milk is added, boiling can cause it to curdle or separate, and it can scorch on the base. Gentle heat keeps the soup smooth.

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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