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Soup

Cream of Tomato Soup.

A creamy tomato soup made with milk, onions, flour, and tomatoes, sweetened with sugar and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Tomato Soup.

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 ↓

Cream of Tomato Soup.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the milk base

  1. Scald the milk with the onion, then remove the onion.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour diluted in cold water until smooth.

  3. Cook for twenty minutes, stirring constantly at first.

Make the tomato base

  1. Cook the tomatoes with sugar for fifteen minutes, then add baking soda and strain through a sieve.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the tomato mixture with the milk mixture and strain into a tureen over the butter, salt, and pepper.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup once thickened.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich base.
Tomatoes
Provide the main tomato flavour and acidity of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, mellowing the soup's flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Combining the milk and tomato mixtures. Acidic tomatoes can curdle hot milk. Adding the baking soda first to the tomatoes reduces acidity, and combining gently helps keep the milk smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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