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Another Lenten Broth

A tomato broth with rice, onion, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Another Lenten Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. In a soup pot, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and fry until light brown.

  3. Stir in the tomatoes and cook until smoking hot.

  4. Pour in the boiling water and simmer for 40 minutes.

  5. Pass the mixture through a colander back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt, then bring to a boil.

  2. Add the rice and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the floured butter and boil for 1 minute before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when cooking the onion.
Flour
Mixed with butter, it thickens the soup as it boils.
Boiled rice
Softens and breaks down into the soup, adding body and thickness.
Onion
Fried until light brown, it adds savoury sweetness and depth.

The step that matters

Stir in the floured butter and boil for 1 minute. Flour added to hot liquid clumps easily. Mixing it with butter first and stirring it in well helps it disperse, and a full minute of boiling cooks out the raw flour taste and fully thickens the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, flour, rice, sugar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, flour, rice, sugar, pepper, parsley. 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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