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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made by stewing tomatoes, then blending with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew tomatoes until soft, then pass through a coarse sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Cream butter with flour or corn starch.

  2. Scald milk and stir in baking soda.

  3. Add the strained tomato to a soup pot.

  4. Heat the butter and flour mixture until almost frying, then add to the pot.

  5. Bring to a boil, then season with pepper, sugar, mace, and salt just before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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
Provide the main body, flavor and liquid of the soup once stewed and sieved.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it a smoother body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the acidity of the tomatoes.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acidity so the milk is less likely to curdle.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the milk. Baking soda reacts with acid and foams, and tomato acid can curdle milk. Stirring the soda into the scalded milk and keeping the soup hot but not boiling helps keep it smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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