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Parker House Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with beef stock, vegetables, tomatoes, butter, flour, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Parker House Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine beef stock, onions, carrot, turnip, and beet in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 45 minutes.

  3. Add tomatoes to the strained liquid.

  4. Boil for an additional 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup again.

Thicken and season

  1. Brown the butter in a separate pan, then stir in enough flour to form a paste.

  2. Pour the paste into the soup and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in sugar and salt to taste.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 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

Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries and extracts flavour from the vegetables.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and bright flavour that define the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browning gives a nutty aroma.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smoother, heavier body when cooked.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the butter to form a paste. Flour must be cooked in fat before adding liquid; otherwise it clumps and leaves a raw, pasty taste. Adding the paste to hot soup and stirring keeps it smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, tomato, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, tomato, butter, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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