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Creamed Tomato Soup

Tomato soup thickened with flour and milk, finished with butter and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place milk in a double boiler and heat until hot.

  2. In a small bowl, mix flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

Make the soup

  1. Rub tomatoes through a sieve and place in another kettle, cooking for 5 minutes.

  2. Add baking soda to the tomatoes and cook a little longer.

  3. Pour the tomato mixture into the hot milk, then add butter and salt.

  4. Stir thoroughly and serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Provide the main flavour, acidity and body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and gives the soup its smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes creamy rather than watery.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acidity, which helps keep the milk from curdling.

The step that matters

Pour the tomato mixture into the hot milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can cause milk proteins to curdle, especially when hot. Baking soda neutralizes some of that acid beforehand, and stirring thoroughly helps the mixture stay smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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