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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, baking soda, butter, flour, milk, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew the tomatoes slowly for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Strain the tomatoes and add baking soda while hot.

Make the soup

  1. Make a white sauce using butter and flour.

  2. Add the tomato juice to the white sauce.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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).

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 flavor, acidity and juice that becomes the soup's base.
Baking soda
Neutralizes the tomatoes' acidity, reducing the risk of curdling the dairy.
Butter
Provides fat for the white sauce, carrying flavor and smoothing texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the white sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding creaminess and mildness.

The step that matters

Add the tomato juice to the white sauce. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can curdle milk-based sauces. The baking soda added earlier neutralizes much of that acidity, and adding the juice gradually while stirring helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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