Skip to main content
Main

Peanut Tomato Soup

A soup made from boiled peanuts, tomatoes, water, salt, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peanut and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 315 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Peanut Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the peanuts as directed and sift through a colander until smooth.

  2. In a bowl, combine the sifted peanuts, sifted tomatoes, water, and salt.

  3. Thicken the mixture with white flour to prevent settling.

  4. If the soup is too thick, add more water to reach desired consistency.

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. Peanut + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together315 recipes

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

  2. Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled peanuts
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the soup when sifted smooth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and tomato flavor, with sifted pulp giving body to the soup.
White flour
Thickens the liquid so the solids are less likely to settle.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with white flour. Flour starch swells when heated in liquid and thickens the soup. Adding it to a mixture that is not yet smooth can leave lumps, and without enough thickening the peanut solids may settle out.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peanut, flour):

  1. Welsh onionfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, flour. 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