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Tomato Cream Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and enriched with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the strained stewed tomatoes in a pot until boiling.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water to form a paste, then add it to the boiling tomatoes.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

  4. Add salt to taste.

  5. In a separate container, heat the milk or cream, then add it to the tomato mixture.

  6. Let everything boil together for 1–2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with browned bread crumbs if desired, and add celery salt for extra flavor.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Strained stewed tomatoes
Form the soup's base and provide its main flavor and liquid.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth, creamy body when stirred into boiling tomatoes.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smoother, milder texture that softens the tomato acidity.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into boiling tomatoes. Flour lumps form if the paste is added too quickly or not smoothed first. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it thickens evenly instead of clumping.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, flour, milk, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, milk, bread. 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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