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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, stock, butter, onion, parsley, sugar, cloves, peppercorns, and thickened with cornstarch.

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

Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes, water, sugar, cloves, and peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Stew slowly until tomatoes are tender.

  3. Press the mixture through a strainer to remove seeds and skin.

  4. Add the strained tomatoes to the soup stock or water.

Make the thickener

  1. Melt butter in a small pan.

  2. Add onion and parsley to the butter.

  3. Cook until lightly browned.

  4. Stir in cornstarch and cook together.

  5. Slowly add 1 cup of stock.

  6. Stir until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add this mixture to the soup.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then strain.

  4. Serve with croutons.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the body of the soup and supply its tart, savory flavor.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and sets when heated in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavor of the cooked onion and parsley.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the stock. Starch clumps if it meets liquid unevenly. Adding the stock slowly while stirring until smooth keeps it dispersed, so when heated the starch swells evenly and thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, sugar, clove, butter, onion):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sugar, clove, butter, onion. 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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