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Tomato Soup

A stew of beef stock and tomatoes flavored with cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and bay leaf, thickened with flour.

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 cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine beef stock and tomatoes in a pot.

  2. Stew until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Season the mixture to taste.

  4. Strain it.

Flavour and thicken

  1. Add cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and bay leaf.

  2. Let it sit on the back of the stove until ready to use.

  3. Thicken the soup slightly with flour mixed with cold water.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity, body and the main tomato flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice notes to the soup.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour mixed with cold water. Flour mixed with cold water disperses evenly so it does not clump when stirred into the hot soup. The starch then swells as the liquid heats, thickening the soup smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, allspice, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, cinnamon, 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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