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Tomato Soup

A vegetable soup made with beef stock, carrots, turnips, beet, onions, tomatoes, butter, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. Combine beef stock, carrot, turnip, beet, and onions in a large pot.

  2. Boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Add tomatoes and thicken

  1. Add the can of tomatoes and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain again.

  3. Heat the butter in a separate saucepan until light brown.

  4. Add the flour to the butter and mix thoroughly off the heat.

  5. Stir in the sugar and return to heat until it boils, then boil for 15 minutes.

  6. Strain.

Finish and serve

  1. Combine the strained soup with the flour mixture.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the vegetable flavour.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour, acidity and colour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and, browned with flour, a nutty aroma.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smoother, heavier body when cooked with the butter.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they simmer in the stock.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until light brown. Flour cooked in fat must be mixed smoothly off the heat and then brought back to a boil, so it thickens evenly without lumps and without tasting raw.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, butter, flour. 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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