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Tomato Soup

A hearty soup made with veal or stock, onions, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. If using veal, boil it for three hours; otherwise, heat the soup stock.

  2. Add the chopped onions, carrots, turnips, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  3. Add the chopped tomatoes and boil for two hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a sieve.

Serve

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

  2. Place the toasted bread 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 that gives the soup its body and flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour, thickening the soup slightly as they cook.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity, colour and the main tomato flavour once simmered and strained.

The step that matters

Strain the soup through a sieve. Straining removes fibrous vegetable pulp and any solids, giving the smooth texture a tomato soup should have. Pressing the solids through the sieve also helps extract more flavour and body into the liquid.

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.

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