Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,232 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Tomato Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the soup
Boil the peeled tomatoes in a saucepan with the chopped onion and other soup vegetables.
Strain the mixture.
Dissolve the flour in the melted butter and add it to the strained soup.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Serve
Serve very hot over fried bread squares.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together17,923 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together20,633 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,013 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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, sweet acidity and flavour of the soup.
- Flour
- Dissolved in butter, it thickens the strained soup slightly.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and smoothing the texture.
- Onion
- Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks into the soup.
The step that matters
Adding the flour and butter mixture. Flour needs to be dissolved fully in the melted butter before it goes into the hot soup; otherwise it can clump into lumps instead of thickening the soup smoothly.
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, flour, butter, pepper, bread):
- Capsicumbetter flavor fit
- Eggplantbetter flavor fit
- Okrabetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, butter, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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