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Clear Tomato Soup

A clear tomato soup made by simmering tomatoes, stock, spices, and onions, then thickened with cornstarch and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Clear Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil tomatoes, white stock or water, cloves, onion, parsley, sugar, and salt together for 1 hour in a porcelain or agate kettle.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the strained liquid to the kettle.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix cornstarch with cold water to form a smooth paste and add it to the kettle.

  2. Add the butter and season with cayenne or black pepper.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor and body of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a light, smooth body as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch paste. Cornstarch must be mixed smooth with cold water first, because dry starch dropped into hot liquid clumps. The paste should then be stirred in while the soup is hot so the starch swells and thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, parsley, sugar, butter, egg, pepper. 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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