Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Soup

A veal or stock-based soup with onions, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, pepper, salt, served with toasted bread cubes.

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

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the shin of veal for three hours or use soup stock.

  2. Add chopped onions, carrots, turnips, pepper, salt, and tomatoes.

  3. Boil for two hours and then strain through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Toast bread until light brown, then cut into dice.

  2. Serve the soup over the toast just before serving to prevent sogginess.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

Veal shin or soup stock
Provides the savory liquid base that gives the soup its body and depth.
Onions
Build savory aromatic sweetness as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the simmered broth.
Turnips
Contribute earthy flavor and body to the simmered broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, color and bright fruity flavor to the soup.
Bread
Toasted and diced, it adds a crisp contrast in texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Serving the soup over the toast. Toast softens quickly when it soaks in hot liquid, so adding the soup only just before serving keeps the bread crisp rather than soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, tomato, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, tomato, pepper, 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 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes