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Creamed Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and butter, finished with milk.

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

Creamed Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pass the stewed tomatoes through a fine colander or sieve to remove lumps and seeds.

  2. Bring the strained tomatoes to a boil.

Make the soup

  1. Quickly add the cold milk while stirring rapidly to prevent curdling.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil again.

  3. Mix the flour with a little milk until smooth, then stir it into the soup.

  4. Add the butter and serve hot.

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.

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. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Fresh stewed tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the soup.
Cold milk
Adds creaminess and a mellow, rich texture to the tomatoes.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the cold milk to the boiling tomatoes. Milk is prone to curdling when it meets acid and high heat. Adding it quickly while stirring rapidly disperses it before proteins can clump, keeping the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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