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Cream Tomato Soup

A creamy tomato soup made with stewed tomatoes, milk, flour, butter, baking soda, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the white sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk until boiling, reserving ½ cup to mix with flour.

  2. Mix the flour with the reserved cold milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk and cook for 10 minutes.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Add the baking soda to the stewed tomatoes and stir well.

  2. Rub the tomato mixture through a fine strainer to remove seeds.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the strained tomato with the milk mixture, adding butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. 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 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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy white sauce that gives the soup body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries the flavor of the sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acidity, softening their sharp taste and altering their color.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, color, and tangy taste of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the tomatoes. Baking soda reacts with the tomatoes' acid and can make them foam and taste soapy if overused. Measure it carefully, since a scant teaspoon is enough to soften acidity. Adding it to the tomatoes, not the hot milk, keeps the reaction controlled before combining.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

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