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Tomato Soup

A vegetable and tomato soup made with beef stock, carrots, turnip, beet, onions, tomatoes, butter, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Illustration of Tomato SoupIllustration

Why it works: Tomato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,597 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Take beef stock, one medium sized carrot, one turnip, one beet and two onions, peeled and cut in pieces.

  2. Boil the vegetables in the beef stock for three-quarters of an hour.

  3. Strain through a sieve.

  4. Add a two-quart can of tomatoes and boil for fifteen minutes.

  5. Strain again and add salt and pepper.

Make the roux and finish

  1. While this is cooking, take a saucepan that will hold about six quarts and put in a quarter of a pound of butter, and heat it to a light brown.

  2. Add three tablespoons of flour while hot.

  3. Take from the fire and mix thoroughly.

  4. Add one dessert spoon of sugar and stir until it boils.

  5. Boil for fifteen minutes and strain.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · 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. Tomato + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,597 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,913 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,859 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide acidity and the main tomato flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
Butter
Carries flavour, and browning it adds a nutty aroma to the base.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the tomatoes by adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour off the heat. Flour stirred into hot butter off the fire disperses evenly and forms a smooth roux, while direct heat can scorch it and leave lumps or a burnt taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, butter, carrot, 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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