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Tomato Soup

Tomato soup made with tomato juice, milk, butter, salt, cayenne, baking soda, served with whipped cream.

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 juice

  1. Stew tomatoes in a little water until soft and mushy.

  2. Strain and measure the juice.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the juice to a boil and add baking soda.

  2. Gradually stir in the scalded milk.

  3. Add salt, cayenne, and beat in the butter.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add a spoonful of unsweetened whipped cream to each bowl of soup.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomato juice
Forms the soup's base and supplies its bright, acidic tomato flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, rounded body that softens the acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the finished soup.
Baking soda
Neutralises some of the tomato's acid, which lowers the risk of the milk curdling.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the scalded milk. Milk proteins can curdle when they meet hot, acidic tomato juice. Adding the scalded milk slowly, with the baking soda already neutralising some acid, helps it blend smoothly instead of separating.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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