Skip to main content
Main

Italian Soup

A tomato-based soup with peppers, horseradish, and macaroni, simmered in stock and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 38 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Cook the green peppers and onion in butter for five minutes.

  2. Add flour, stock, and tomatoes; let simmer for fifteen minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.

  2. Just before serving, add horseradish, vinegar, and previously cooked macaroni rings.

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.

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. Horseradish + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 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

Brown soup stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries the flavour of the cooked peppers.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, tang and colour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it simmers.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and bite.
Macaroni rings
Add starch and bulk, turning the soup into a more substantial dish.

The step that matters

Just before serving, add horseradish, vinegar, and previously cooked macaroni rings.. Horseradish's sharp aroma is volatile and fades with prolonged heat, so adding it at the end keeps its bite. Pasta left standing in hot liquid keeps softening and absorbing liquid, so it should be added last, already cooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, horseradish, radish, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, horseradish, radish, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes