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Tomato Soup

A simple soup made with fat, butter, onions, water, potatoes, celery, tomatoes, pepper, salt, and optional flour.

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

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, heat the fat and butter until hot.

  2. Add the chopped onions and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in the quart of water and add the potatoes, celery, tomatoes, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer until the potatoes are tender.

  5. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  6. If the soup is too thin, add a little sieved flour to thicken it.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when simmered to give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, acidity and color of the soup.
Onions
Soften and build a sweet, savory base flavor when simmered in fat.
Sieved flour
Thickens the liquid by starch when added, if the soup is too thin.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks them into fine pieces and makes the soup smooth. Skipping or rushing this leaves the texture coarse and fibrous.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, potato, celery, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, potato, celery, pepper, 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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