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Soup

Tomato Pueee

A smooth tomato soup made from stewed tomatoes, thickened with a butter and flour roux and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Pueee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. In a granite-ware saucepan, combine the tomatoes and water or stock.

  2. Add the bay leaf, parsley, celery, peppercorns, and sugar.

  3. Simmer until the tomatoes are thoroughly soft.

Make the roux

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and sauté until soft but not browned.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook without browning.

  4. Add enough of the tomato mixture to the roux to dilute it, then mix well with the remaining tomato.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and pass through a fine sieve or strainer.

  2. Heat again before serving and sprinkle with small croutons.

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.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body and flavor of the soup as they break down into purée.
Butter
Enriches the soup and forms the fat base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by cooking with the butter to form a roux.
Onion
Adds savory depth as it softens in the butter.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the flour without browning. Flour must be cooked gently in the butter to remove its raw taste and thicken evenly. Browning changes the color and flavor of the soup and weakens the roux's thickening power.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, celery, sugar, butter, onion, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, celery, sugar, butter, onion, flour. 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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