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Tomato Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 the chopped onions, carrots, turnips, pepper, salt, and tomatoes.

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

Serve

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

  2. Place the diced toast in a tureen and pour the soup over it just before serving.

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 savoury liquid base and body for the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during long simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the broth, thickening it slightly.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity, colour and the main tomato flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Pour the soup over the toast just before serving. Bread soaks up liquid and turns soft quickly, so the diced toast loses its crispness if the soup sits on it for long.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, carrot, turnip, 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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