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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water or stock, oil, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Strain the canned tomatoes and heat them.

  2. Add an equal amount of boiling water or soup stock.

Make the roux

  1. Heat the oil, butter, or fat in a pot.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a few seconds.

Finish and serve

  1. Gradually add the tomato juice and salt.

  2. Boil for 3 to 5 minutes until it reaches gravy consistency.

  3. Serve hot, optionally with raw cucumbers and celery.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 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, flavour and acidity of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid to a gravy-like consistency when cooked in fat and heated.
Oil, butter, or fat
Carries the flour and cooks it into a roux, adding richness and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in fat before adding liquid. Cooking flour briefly in fat coats the starch granules so they disperse without lumping when liquid is added. Stirring in the tomato juice gradually keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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