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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, onion, butter, stale bread, corn starch, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes with the onion for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomatoes and onion through a colander.

  3. Add hot water to make 1 quart of juice, then return the soup to the fire.

Brown the bread

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and add the diced stale bread.

  2. Stir until the bread is browned, then place it in a tureen.

Thicken and finish

  1. Pour a little soup into the frying pan with the browned butter.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in the corn-starch mixture.

  4. Stir rapidly until it thickens.

  5. Pour this mixture into the soup.

  6. Add cayenne and salt to taste.

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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body and tangy acidity of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps brown the bread.
Stale bread
Browned in butter, it becomes crisp croutons that contrast with the smooth soup.
Corn-starch
Thickens the soup as its starch granules swell when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Stir rapidly as the corn-starch mixture goes in. Starch granules swell and thicken the liquid only when heated while being stirred. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed, which prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, bread, corn. 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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