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Tomato Soup

A clear soup made from tomatoes, stock, spices, butter, flour, and cream.

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

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine tomatoes, stock or water, peppercorns, bay leaf, cloves, salt, sugar, and mace in a pot.

  2. Cook the mixture and strain it.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix butter and flour until smooth, then add to the strained soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream and heat gently.

  2. Serve with croutons.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup when mixed with butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and heat gently. Cream can curdle or separate when boiled, especially in an acidic tomato base. Heating it gently keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, sugar, mace, butter, flour, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sugar, mace, butter, flour, cream. 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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