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Cream Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with butter and milk, flavored with salt, pepper, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream Tomato Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the tomatoes thoroughly in the water.

  2. Scald the milk in a double boiler to prevent scorching.

  3. Add the baking soda carefully to avoid overflow.

  4. When the effervescence subsides, add the scalded milk and season with 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. Butter + milktop 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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, flavor, and acidity of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, rich texture to the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acid, reducing the chance the milk curdles, and causes foaming.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the tomato acid and releases carbon dioxide, so it foams up quickly and can boil over. Adding it slowly and waiting for the fizzing to subside before adding the milk keeps the soup from overflowing and lowers the risk of curdling.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, 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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