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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, onions, carrot, butter, flour, stock, peppercorns, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Tomato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the onions and carrot.

  2. Sauté them in the butter with the peppercorns and sugar.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and mix well.

Make the soup

  1. Cut up the tomatoes and add them to the pot.

  2. Pour in the boiling stock and stir until it boils.

  3. Simmer slowly for one hour.

  4. Rub the soup through a sieve.

  5. Return it to the saucepan and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Pour into a warm tureen and serve with fried bread.

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

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, flavour and colour of the soup.
Butter
Carries the sautéed vegetables and adds richness to the soup.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in fat.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the stock.
Bone stock
Forms the liquid base that the soup simmers in.

The step that matters

Rubbing the soup through a sieve. Pushing the cooked soup through a sieve breaks down the softened tomato, onion and carrot pieces and removes skins, seeds and fibres, giving a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the soup coarse.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, flour, sugar. 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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