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Tomato Cream Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and butter, served hot with fried bread pieces.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring the sweet milk to a boil in a pot.

  2. Add a pinch of baking soda to the strained tomatoes to prevent curdling.

  3. Stir the tomatoes into the boiling milk.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  5. Mix in the flour to thicken the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fried bread pieces.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 acidic tomato flavor of the soup.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the soup its rich texture.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some tomato acidity so the milk is less likely to curdle.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with heat to give body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the tomatoes into the boiling milk. Acidic tomatoes can curdle hot milk. Baking soda neutralizes some of the acid, and the tomatoes should be added to the milk gradually while stirring to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, butter, 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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