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Tomato Soup

A hearty tomato soup with celery, onions, ham, and herbs, finished with milk or cream and seasoned with lemon juice, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the celery and onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the sliced celery, onions, tomatoes, stock or water, bay leaf, parsley, sorrel, and ham.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with lemon juice, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Reheat gently in a clean pot without boiling.

  3. Serve with fried bread cubes.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour in the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body and a smoother texture.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and softens the sharpness of the tomatoes.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the stock base.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Cooked tomato and vegetable pulp only turns smooth when forced through a fine sieve; skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy, seed- and skin-flecked texture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, parsley, sorrel, lemon, sugar, pepper, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, parsley, sorrel, lemon, sugar, pepper, ham. 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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