Skip to main content
Main

Cream Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with butter and milk, sweetened with sugar and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream 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 ↓

Cream Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. Moisten the salt with cold water.

  2. Add the sugar and butter to a pot.

  3. Add the strained tomatoes and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the baking soda.

Combine with milk

  1. Pour the tomato mixture into the milk after both have boiled.

  2. Do not return to the stove.

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

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strained tomatoes
Form the soup's main body and provide its tangy, acidic base flavor.
Milk
Supplies the creamy body and mild sweetness that make the soup smooth.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, helping reduce curdling of the milk.

The step that matters

Pouring the tomato mixture into the milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and heating acid with milk proteins can make them clump and curdle. Adding the tomato mixture to milk only after both have boiled, and not returning the soup to the stove, helps keep it smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesTomato FrittersTomato Fritters23 recipes