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Tomato Soup

A vegetable soup made with tomatoes, carrots, celery, onion, sugar, salt, pepper, and thickened with cream and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine stock, sugar, salt, pepper, carrot, celery, tomatoes, and onion.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are tender, then strain through a colander.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream with the flour until smooth.

  2. Stir the cream mixture into the strained soup and bring to a boil.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 acidity.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and mild sweetness as it cooks down.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
Sweet cream
Adds richness, smoothness and a softer, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the cream and flour into the soup. Flour lumps if it is not fully blended with the cream first. Starch thickens only when heated, so the soup must reach a full boil after stirring in to fully thicken and cook out the raw flour taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, carrot, celery, tomato, clove, cream):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, carrot, celery, tomato, clove, cream. 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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