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Soup

Corn and Tomato Soup

A tomato and corn soup made with butter, onions, spices, canned tomatoes, corn, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onions, bay leaf, and black peppercorns; cook for 5 minutes without browning.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the tomatoes, sugar, salt, and white pepper; stir often and cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Pour in the boiling water and cook for 5 minutes.

  6. Rub the tomatoes through a sieve into a clean saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the corn to the soup and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with the cream or milk, then stir into the soup and serve immediately.

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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onions and carries flavour into the base.
Onions
Sweetness and aroma that build the soup's savoury base as they soften.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks with the butter and tomatoes.
Tomatoes
Main body and acidity of the soup, thickened further once sieved.
Corn
Adds sweetness and body, cooked long enough to soften in the soup.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the soup for a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the soup. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the soup is too hot or boiling when they are added they can scramble into lumps. Mixing them with cream or milk first and stirring gently helps them blend smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, flour, tomato, sugar, corn, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, tomato, sugar, corn, egg. 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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