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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water, spices, and a roux of butter and flour.

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

Why it works: Tomato and onion 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the tomatoes, water, peppercorns, bay leaf, cloves, sugar, and onion.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  3. Add salt and baking soda to the strained liquid.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Add the butter‑flour mixture to the hot soup and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain again and 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. Tomato + oniontop 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. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 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

Canned tomatoes
Form the base of the soup and supply its main flavor and acidity.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils with the butter.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, mellowing the flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the butter‑flour mixture. Flour must be fully smoothed into the butter before it goes into the hot soup, and the soup must be kept boiling for the full 5 minutes. Otherwise lumps form and the starch does not fully cook, leaving a raw floury taste and uneven thickness.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sugar, onion, 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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