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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, stock, sugar, salt, cayenne, onion, parsley, butter, and thickened with corn starch or flour.

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 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 ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the tomatoes, stock or water, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper together for 20 minutes.

  2. In a separate pan, fry the chopped onion and parsley in butter until yellow.

  3. Add corn starch or flour to the onion mixture and stir until smooth.

  4. Strain the tomatoes, return them to the kettle, and add the onion and parsley mixture.

  5. Let it boil once 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body and tomato flavor of the soup.
Butter
Carries the onion and parsley flavor into the soup and adds richness.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the soup so it turns smooth and less watery.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch into the onion mixture. Starch clumps when added directly to hot liquid, so mixing it smoothly into the fat-and-onion mixture first helps it disperse evenly. Stirring until smooth prevents lumps that would stay in the finished soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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