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Tomato Cream Soup

A tomato soup thickened with butter, flour, and milk, seasoned with onion juice, baking soda, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cook the tomatoes until soft and strain through a colander, or drain liquid from canned tomatoes.

  2. Heat the strained tomatoes in a pot with a pinch of baking soda and onion juice.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt butter and flour together until bubbling.

  2. Pour in the hot milk and stir until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Season the tomato mixture with salt and pepper, then combine with the thickened milk.

  2. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and 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.

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and mellows the tomato acidity.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps form the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-giving sauce with the butter.
Baking soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, reducing sharpness and curdling risk.

The step that matters

Pouring the tomatoes into the milk mixture. Acidic tomatoes can curdle hot milk. Heating the tomatoes with baking soda reduces their acidity, and combining them carefully with the thickened milk helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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