Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with onions, tomatoes, celery, carrot, and gravy, seasoned with white pepper, salt, and cayenne, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tomato Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Remove the onions and fry the tomatoes just until heated through.

  3. Put the tomatoes and their juices into a stewpan with the onions, celery, and sliced carrot.

  4. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Add 3 pints of gravy and stew for 1.5 hours.

  6. Pulp the vegetables through a sieve.

  7. Season with white pepper, salt, and cayenne.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread cut into small pieces.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth when browned in butter before stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the onions.
Celery
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the stewed base.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stewed vegetables.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savoury richness for the long stew.

The step that matters

Pulp the vegetables through a sieve. After the long stew the vegetables are soft, and pressing them through a sieve breaks them down into a smooth, thickened soup. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the soup coarse and stringy in texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, tomato, celery, carrot, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, tomato, celery, carrot, bread. 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.

More tomato soup recipes

Cream 27Clear 14Creamed 10Creamy 8French 8with Rice 8 See all 632 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes