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Tomato Soup, Without Stock

A tomato soup made by simmering butter, onion, garlic, allspice, red pepper, mace, parsley, and tomatoes, then thickened with flour and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Soup, Without Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt butter in a pot and let it simmer.

  2. Add sliced onion, cloves, allspice, red pepper, mace, and parsley.

  3. Cook until onion is well browned.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add tomatoes and cook slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Mix flour with a little cream until smooth, then add to the strained soup.

  4. If using, add stock or beef extract to enhance the flavor.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the spiced aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Tomatoes
Form the main body and acidic tomato flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup so it becomes smooth and body-rich.

The step that matters

Browning the onion. Onion that is well browned develops sweet, deep flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale onion leaves the soup tasting flat and raw, so it needs patient cooking over moderate heat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, clove, allspice, pepper, parsley, tomato. 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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