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Tomato Soup

A hearty tomato soup with turnips, carrots, onions, celery, ham, butter, and stock.

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

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, steam or slowly stew the turnips, carrots, onions, celery, and ham with butter over low heat for about 1 hour.

  2. Add the diluted stock and tomatoes, then stew for an additional 1.5 hours.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt, then boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 flavour, acidity and body of the soup as they break down during stewing.
Turnips
Add starchy body and mild sweetness as they soften into the soup.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and thicken the soup as they cook down.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma through slow, gentle cooking.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the stock base.
Diluted stock or meat broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables and ham.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked solids through a sieve breaks them down into a smooth texture; skipping or rushing this leaves the soup coarse and fibrous.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, onion, celery, ham, butter, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, celery, ham, butter, meat. 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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