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Tomato Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, tomatoes, vegetables, and sweetened with sugar, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 broth

  1. Boil the shin of veal in 4 quarts of water for 4 hours.

  2. Add pepper, salt, onions, carrots, turnips, and tomatoes; boil for 1 hour.

  3. Strain out all the vegetables.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the ground rice or arrowroot with the soup and stir well.

  2. Add sugar and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve very hot with toasted bread on the side.

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. Pepper + carrottop 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
Gives the broth its meaty body and savory flavor as it simmers for hours.
Tomatoes
Provide the main acidic, fruity flavor and color of the soup.
Ground rice or arrowroot
Starch that thickens the soup as it is heated, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Stirring the ground rice or arrowroot into the soup. Starch must be fully dispersed and then brought to a boil to thicken properly. Adding it to hot liquid without stirring well can cause lumps, and it will not reach full thickness unless the soup is heated enough for the starch granules to swell.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, carrot, turnip, tomato, rice, sugar. 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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