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Tomato Soup Without Stock

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, water, salt, sugar, cloves, pepper, onion, parsley, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Without Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the tomatoes, water, salt, sugar, cloves, pepper, onion, and parsley in a pot.

  2. Stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pot.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Stir this mixture into the soup to thicken it.

  3. Serve the soup hot 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.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

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, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and combines with flour to form a roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into the soup. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Mixing it smooth with butter first lets it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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