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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with onions, butter, tomatoes, bay leaf, cloves, and a flour slurry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in a pot.

  2. Sauté the onion until soft.

  3. Add the tomato, bay leaf, water, cloves, and salt.

  4. Cook for 20 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix flour with an equal amount of water until smooth.

  2. Add more water until thin enough to pour.

  3. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the soup.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup.

  6. Add sugar.

  7. 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.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Adds fat and richness, and helps carry flavour from the aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when stirred into the hot liquid.
Tomato
Forms the base of the soup and provides its main flavour and acidity.
Onion
Softens while cooking to add savoury aroma and sweetness to the base.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomato for a rounder taste.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the flour mixture into the soup. Adding the flour slowly while stirring prevents lumps, because starch clumps when it hits hot liquid all at once. Keep the soup moving so the starch disperses and thickens evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, clove, 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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