Name: Tomato Soup
Ingredients: 4 quarts water; 1 whole chicken or beef; 1 can of tomatoes

Why it works: Chicken and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,031 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

4 quarts water
1 whole chicken or beef
1 can of tomatoes

Directions

Boil the chicken or beef in 4 quarts of water for 4 hours.
Strain the broth.
Add 1 can of tomatoes to the broth and boil for 1 hour.

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.

Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Adds acidity, sweetness and body to the broth as it simmers.
Chicken or beef: Releases flavour and gelatin into the water during long simmering, forming the broth base.

“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.