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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, finished with milk.

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

Tomato Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Place the tomatoes in a saucepan and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a wire sieve, pressing to extract as much liquid as possible.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and mix until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the stock, bringing it to a boil, then add the pepper and salt.

  3. Strain the mixture again, then add the milk without boiling it again to prevent curdling.

  4. You can warm it to boiling heat anytime.

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 + peppertop 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

Tomatoes
Supplies the main flavour and the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Carries fat and flavour and forms the base for the thickening roux.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the texture of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk without boiling. Milk proteins can curdle when heated to a boil, especially in an acidic tomato base. Adding the milk after straining and keeping the soup below boiling helps keep it smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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