Heinz cream of tomato soup

In the beginning of 1869 two young American businessmen, Henry J Heinz and L Clarence Noble, launch Heinz & Noble. The company began to sell bottled horseradish sauce in Pittsburgh from 1869. He aimed to emulate the high standard of the greatest producer of packaged foods in the world: Crosse & Blackwell.

Heinz Cream of Tomato soup was originally manufactured in Canada and importing into the U.K. Heinz Cream of Tomato soup first went on sale in the U.K. at Fortnum & Mason, a department store, in 1910.

After World War I, though, Heinz opened a factory in London, which helped the soup grow in popularity. By the 1950s the soup was so popular manufacturing was transferred to its plant in Wigan, which is Europe's largest food factory. Over the last 100 years, Heinz has sold 8.2 billion tins of Cream of Tomato.
Heinz cream of tomato soup

History of tomato soup in America

Tomato soup is quintessential American comfort food, usually eaten with a grilled cheese sandwich.

Although tomatoes apparently were introduced into Florida in the 1600s, they made minimal impression on the dietary habits of Americans until two centuries later. The first tomato soup recipes were simply tomatoes added to basic vegetable soups.

By 1840s tomatoes were an important part of most cookery books, Modern Cookery, written by the British cookbook author Eliza Acton for publication in the United States, in 1845 contained several tomato recipes.

Between 1832 when N. M. K. Lee’s first tomato soup recipe was published and in 1841, when Lettice Bryan’s version published the multitude of other vegetable were left out and the purely tomato soup know today emerge. Lettice Bryan’s Kentucky Housewife feature more than twenty tomato recipes, including some for baked, broiled, stewed, fried and pickled tomatoes.

Andrew Smith in his The Tomato in America stated that tomatoes were used in soup at least as early as the mid-eighteenth century in colonial America.

In 1897, John T Dorrance created a process of condensing soup which involved removing half of the water from the soup to create a thicker consistency.

The first production in 1898 means reducing volume to make it lighter and more transportable, cheaper to can and yet convenient to cook was a new development of a specifically commercial commodity food.

History of tomato soup in America