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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, onions, cloves, thyme, flour, Cottolene, sugar, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Wash and quarter the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Place them in a kettle with the cloves and thyme.

  3. Let all stew for 30 minutes, then rub through a wire sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the juice to the kettle and add Cottolene, flour, and sugar.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes and serve with or without small cubes of toasted bread.

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 + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 once stewed and sieved.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften during stewing.
Flour
Thickens the strained juice so the soup has a smoother body.
Cottolene
Adds fat to the soup, carrying flavour and giving a richer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Balances the tomatoes' acidity with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the flour to the hot juice. Flour clumps when it meets liquid unevenly. Mixing it with the fat first or adding it gradually while stirring helps it dissolve smoothly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, thyme, flour, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, thyme, flour, sugar, 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.

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