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Tomato Cream Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and butter, finished with milk and seasoned with salt and pepper.

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 ↓

Tomato Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew the tomatoes for ten minutes.

  2. Rub the tomatoes through a colander.

  3. Mix the baking soda with the tomatoes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Combine the melted butter and flour in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter-flour mixture to the tomatoes and let it boil.

  3. Just before serving, add the hot milk.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

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
Form the soup's main body and provide its tangy, acidic flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the tomato's sharpness with richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with butter and liquid.
Melted butter
Carries fat and flavor, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, reducing the risk of curdling the milk.

The step that matters

Just before serving, add the hot milk.. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make milk curdle when the two are heated together for long. Adding the hot milk last, shortly before serving, limits the time they stay hot together and helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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