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Soup

Tomato Bouillon with Bread Fingers

A clear tomato soup made by boiling tomatoes, onion, and seasonings, then strained and served with toasted bread fingers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Bouillon with Bread Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sliced tomatoes, water, onion, bay leaf, salt, and white pepper.

  2. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a colander, using as much of the flesh as possible.

  4. Add 1 quart of boiling water and, if desired, the beef extract and beaten egg whites.

  5. Boil rapidly for 5 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup through two layers of cheesecloth.

Serve

  1. Serve the clear soup with toasted bread fingers.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 broth once pressed through a colander.
Egg whites
Coagulate as the soup boils, trapping particles so the broth clarifies.

The step that matters

Strain through two layers of cheesecloth after the egg whites have boiled. Egg whites form a coagulated raft that traps fine solids as the soup simmers. Straining gently through cheesecloth, without squeezing, lets the raft hold back the particles and keeps the broth clear.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, beef, egg, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, beef, egg, bread. 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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