Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with stale bread, onions, herbs, and veal or mutton broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tomato Soup

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew the tomatoes slowly in water for 1.5 hours.

  2. Pass the tomatoes through a fine sieve.

  3. Add the broth to the strained tomatoes.

  4. Pass enough stale bread through a sieve to thicken the soup.

Fry the onions

  1. Fry the onions until brown, then strain them.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the strained onions and herbs to the soup, season with salt and pepper.

  2. Boil the soup well and serve.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes (in the method)
Form the main body and the tangy flavour of the soup.
Veal or mutton broth
Adds liquid and meaty richness to the soup.
Stale bread
Its starch thickens the soup once passed through a sieve.
Onions
Browning by frying adds sweet, savoury depth to the soup.
Fine herbs
Add aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until brown, then strain them.. Browning builds savoury, sweet flavour through the Maillard reaction, but onions that go past golden turn bitter and can spoil the whole soup. Stop once they are evenly brown.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, 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.

More tomato soup recipes

Cream 27Clear 14Creamed 10Creamy 8French 8with Rice 8 See all 632 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes