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Tomato Soups

A vegetable soup made with tomatoes, carrots, turnip, onions, water, milk, flour, butter, mace, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a soup pot.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and fry for 10 minutes without browning.

  3. Stir in the flour, then add the water, tomatoes, mace, bay leaf, whole pepper, and salt.

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Return to the pot, add the milk, season to taste, and serve.

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.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the vegetables are fried.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it a smoother body.
Milk
Softens the acidity of the tomatoes and adds creaminess.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and depth as they soften in the butter.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup base.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables without browning. Gentle frying softens the vegetables and builds a mellow flavour. Browning would make the soup taste bitter and darken its colour, so keep the heat moderate and stir often.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, turnip, onion, milk, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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