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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water, flour, fat, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the can of tomatoes and an equal amount of water in a pot and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with the beef dripping or bacon fat until smooth, then stir the mixture into the simmering tomatoes.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. If the soup is very acidic, add the sugar to balance the flavor.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, optionally adding boiled rice or hard-bread crumbs.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 and tangy, acidic flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich when cooked.
Beef dripping or bacon fat
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the tomato acidity, giving a rounder flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the simmering tomatoes. Flour clumps if added dry or without being blended with fat first. Mixing it smooth with the fat and stirring it into hot liquid lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, pepper, sugar, rice. 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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