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Cream of Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with milk and flour, sweetened with sugar and seasoned with salt, bay leaf, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream of Tomato Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes, onion, bay leaf, and parsley for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the seasonings and press the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

  3. Add sugar and salt to the tomato mixture.

  4. Stir in the baking soda dissolved in a little water.

Make the milk sauce

  1. Scald the milk in a separate pot.

  2. Rub the flour and butter together until smooth.

  3. Add a little hot milk to this mixture and stir until smooth.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the remaining milk.

  5. Stir until it thickens to a cream.

Combine and serve

  1. Heat the soup tureen.

  2. Pour in the tomato mixture.

  3. Slowly add the milk while stirring briskly to prevent curdling.

  4. 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.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 and smooth, mellow texture of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a cream by gelatinising its starch with heat.
Baking soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, though it can also cause curdling.

The step that matters

Slowly add the milk while stirring briskly. Tomato is acidic, and acid can make hot milk curdle when the two meet. Adding the milk slowly while stirring keeps it dispersed and smooth, so the soup stays creamy instead of separating.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, milk, parsley, butter, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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