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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with butter, flour, beef stock, onion, canned tomatoes, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Chop the onion into small pieces and brown it in the butter.

  3. Add the can of tomatoes and cook for 1 hour.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove solids.

  5. Return the liquid to the fire and add the beef stock and flour.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 sweetness of the soup.
Beef stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup has more body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savour when browned in butter.
Butter
Carries flavour from the onion and adds richness.

The step that matters

Add the flour to the liquid. Flour clumps if stirred into hot liquid without being mixed smoothly first, so it thickens unevenly. Whisking it into a little cold stock before adding it helps it disperse.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, onion, pepper, sauce):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, onion, pepper, sauce. 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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