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Turkish Soup

A simple rice soup made with butter, tomatoes, and hot water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Turkish Soup

Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turkish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the canned tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the rice and fry for 6 minutes.

  4. Gradually pour in the hot water, a few drops at a time.

  5. Cook until the rice is soft, then season with salt and pepper 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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns in the pan, adding a nutty aroma and richer flavour to the soup.
Canned tomatoes
Provide acidity, colour and liquid body as they cook down into the soup.
Rice
Softens as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it a substantial texture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water gradually. Pouring the water slowly, a few drops at a time, lets the rice absorb liquid and cook evenly while the soup thickens. Adding it all at once can dilute the flavour and leave the rice unevenly cooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, pepper. 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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