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Cream of Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with cloves, onion, sugar, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cream of Tomato Soup

Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,768 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cream of Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. Combine canned tomatoes, water, cloves, onion, sugar, salt, and parsley in a pot.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

Make the cream base

  1. Rub flour into butter.

  2. Heat the milk with the flour-butter mixture in a double boiler.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the tomato mixture and baking soda to the thickened milk.

  2. Strain the mixture and pour into the thickened milk.

  3. Let it boil once, then serve.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main flavor and acidity, and the body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy, moist base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acid, making the milk less likely to curdle.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the tomatoes with mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the tomato mixture to the milk. Tomato acid can cause milk proteins to curdle. The milk should be thickened with flour first, and the baking soda neutralizes some of the acid, which helps keep the soup smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

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