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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water, sugar, salt, pepper, cloves, butter, and cornstarch, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a porcelain stew pan, combine the tomatoes, hot water, sugar, salt, pepper, and whole cloves.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the butter.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the cornstarch with a little water to create a slurry, then add it to the soup to thicken.

Finish and serve

  1. Once everything has boiled together, strain the soup and serve with croutons.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 acidic flavour of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup when heated with liquid, giving it a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch slurry. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water before it goes into the hot soup, because dry starch clumps when added directly. Once it has boiled, the starch swells and thickens the liquid, so it should be stirred in well and given time to cook through.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, clove, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, clove, butter. 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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