Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water, cloves, onion, corn starch, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tomato Soup

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine tomatoes, water, cloves, and chopped onion in a pot.

  2. Brown corn starch in butter.

  3. Add the browned corn starch to the pot.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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 flavor of the soup.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup as it is heated with the liquid.
Butter
Carries the browning of the corn starch and adds richness.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the base.

The step that matters

Brown the corn starch in butter. Cooking the starch in fat until lightly browned develops a nutty flavor and helps it disperse smoothly without lumps when added to the hot liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, corn, butter, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, corn, butter, 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.

More tomato soup recipes

Cream 27Clear 14Creamed 10Creamy 8French 8with Rice 8 See all 632 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipes