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Tomato Soup

A soup made from tomatoes, water, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, and thickened with flour, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the tomatoes in 2 quarts of water until well cooked.

  2. Rinse the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add 1 cup of butter, 1 teaspoon of sugar, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Bring to a boil and thicken with flour until the desired consistency is reached.

Make the croutons and serve

  1. Cut stale bread into small squares and fry in hot butter until browned.

  2. Serve the soup with the fried bread 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 and tomato flavor of the soup as they cook down.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup, and browns the bread for croutons.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Softens the acidity of the tomatoes and adds a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be stirred into boiling liquid gradually and kept moving, otherwise it clumps and stays raw-tasting. Starch granules swell and thicken the soup only when they are fully dispersed and brought to a boil.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, flour, 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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