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Tomato Soup

A hearty soup made with beef stock, root vegetables, tomatoes, butter, sugar, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the beef stock with the carrot, turnip, beet, and onions for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve without pressing the vegetables.

  3. Add the tomatoes and boil for 15 minutes, then strain again.

Make the soup

  1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the sugar until light brown.

  2. Add the flour to the butter mixture while hot, then stir in the strained stock and tomato.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, then strain again before serving.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 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

Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the vegetable flavor.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity, and bright tomato flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and, with the flour, forms the base that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by cooking with the butter into a roux.
Sugar
Browns in the butter and adds sweetness that balances the tomato's acidity.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the hot butter mixture. Adding flour to hot butter lets it coat the fat evenly and cook into a smooth roux. Adding the liquid too early or to cold butter can leave lumps that are hard to remove.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, tomato, butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, tomato, butter, sugar, flour. 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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