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Spanish Soup

A pepper and tomato soup with macaroni, seasoned with salt, paprika, and Tabasco sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Chop and cook the peppers in butter and flour for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the stock and tomatoes, cover, and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup and season with salt, paprika, and Tabasco sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the macaroni cut into rings.

  2. 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.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Butter
Fat that cooks the peppers gently and carries their flavour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, body and a fresh tomato flavour to the simmered soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries and blends the other flavours.
Sweet red and green pepper
Adds sweetness and a vegetable flavour base to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the peppers in butter and flour. Flour needs to cook briefly in the fat to lose its raw taste and to thicken the soup smoothly. Cooking too hot can brown or scorch it, and lumps form if the stock is added without the flour being evenly mixed in.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, sauce. 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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