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Condensed Tomato Soup

A preserved tomato soup made by boiling tomato pulp with butter, onions, salt, sugar, spices, and thickening with corn starch, then canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,092 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Condensed Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a kettle, combine the pulp and butter and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the chopped onions and cook for 40 minutes.

  3. Within 10 minutes of finishing, add the beef extract, salt, sugar, and pepper.

  4. Within 2 minutes of finishing, add the cinnamon and mace.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the cold water with corn starch, stir it in, and boil.

  2. Turn off the heat and run the mixture through a rotary pulper or shaker.

Can and process

  1. Place in cans, cap, tip, and process No. 1 cans for 30 minutes at 240°F (115°C).

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

  1. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,779 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Pulp
Forms the tomato body of the soup and carries most of its flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding the tomato's acidity.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomato pulp with sweetness.

The step that matters

Timing the late additions. Spices such as cinnamon and mace are volatile and fade with prolonged heat, so adding them within 2 minutes of the end of cooking preserves their aroma. Adding the beef extract, salt, sugar and pepper close to the end similarly protects their flavour.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, onion, butter, beef, corn, cinnamon, mace):

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Clovebetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, onion, butter, beef, corn, cinnamon, mace. 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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