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Clear Tomato Soup

A clear tomato soup made with stewed tomatoes, pearl sago, and thin nut cream, served with parsley and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Clear Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Soak the sago in 1 pint of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Cook the sago slowly on the back of the stove until transparent and almost boiling.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the tomatoes, parsley, and onion; cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the nut cream to the tomatoes and strain through a sieve.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat, add salt, and stir in the sago.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with crisps or rolls.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Stewed tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic, tomato flavour of the soup.
Thin nut cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the tomato base.
Pearl sago
Thickens the soup as its starch turns transparent and gelatinizes when cooked.
Grated onion
Adds savoury aromatic flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the sago slowly. Sago starch must be cooked long enough to become fully transparent and thicken properly. Rushing it over high heat can scorch the bottom or leave it lumpy and cloudy, and it may fail to thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cream, parsley, 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.

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