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Tomato Soup

A vegetable and tomato soup thickened with butter and flour, served with toasted bread.

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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Dice the onion, carrot, and turnip.

  2. In a frying pan, cook the diced vegetables with the butter over low heat for 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the tomato and 1 pint of stock, then add the cooked vegetables and bring to a boil.

  2. In the frying pan, add the remaining butter and flour, stirring until smooth and frothy.

  3. Add the remaining pint of stock to the flour mixture and bring to a boil.

  4. Combine this mixture with the stewpan contents and season with salt, sugar, and pepper.

  5. Cook slowly for 30 minutes, then strain the soup.

Make the toasted bread

  1. For the toasted bread, butter the slices, cut them into dice, and toast in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 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

Tomato
Provides the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that turns the tomato and vegetables into a soup.
Butter
Carries flavour when cooking the vegetables and enriches the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the butter.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it softens in butter.

The step that matters

Making the roux. Cooking the butter and flour together until smooth and frothy cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken evenly; adding stock too early or unstirred can leave lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

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