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Chickpea, Tomato and Bread Soup

A tomato-based soup with chickpeas, vegetables, and toasted sourdough bread, finished with pesto and basil.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and chickpea share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 39 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven180°C / gas mark 4
Time30 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Heat the oven to 180°C / gas mark 4.

  2. Put the onion and fennel in a large pan, add three tablespoons of oil and sauté over medium heat for four minutes.

  3. Add the carrot and celery, and soften, stirring occasionally, for four minutes.

  4. Add the tomato purée, stir for a minute, then add the wine and let it bubble for a minute or two.

  5. Add the tomatoes, herbs, sugar and stock, and season.

  6. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Toast the bread and crush the chickpeas

  1. Meanwhile, break the bread into chunks, toss with two tablespoons of oil and some salt, and scatter in a roasting tin.

  2. Bake for 10 minutes, until thoroughly dry, then set aside.

  3. About 10 minutes before you want to serve, put the chickpeas in a bowl and crush them a little with a potato masher or the end of a rolling pin; you want some to be left whole.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chickpeas to the soup and simmer for five minutes.

  2. Next add the toasted bread, stir and cook for another five minutes.

  3. Taste the soup and add salt and pepper liberally.

  4. Ladle the hot soup into bowls.

  5. Spoon some pesto in the centre, drizzle with plenty of olive oil and finish with shredded basil, if you like.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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. Fennel + chickpeatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + chickpeatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Celery + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,375 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

Stale sourdough bread
Thickens the soup and soaks up broth, giving it a hearty, bread-based body.
Chickpeas
Add body and texture when partly crushed, while whole pieces keep some bite.
Tinned plum tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that form the base of the soup.
Olive oil
Carries flavour from the aromatics and adds richness to the soup and bread.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma as it bubbles and reduces into the base.
Onion
Softened in oil, it builds sweetness and savoury depth as the base flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the bread before adding it to the soup. Baking the bread until thoroughly dry lets it toast and hold its shape, so it thickens the soup without turning soggy and disintegrating into it.

Flavor stand-ins for the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, fennel, olive, carrot, celery, tomato, white wine):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Orangebetter flavor fit
  3. Limebetter flavor fit
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, fennel, olive, carrot, celery, tomato, white wine. 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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