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Potage Portugais- -portuguese Soup

A tomato-based soup with onions, salt pork, rice, herbs, and butter, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Potage Portugais- -portuguese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, cook the chopped onions in butter with the salt pork until softened.

  2. Add the quartered tomatoes and cook until they form a puree.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the soup stock and bring to a boil.

Cook and finish

  1. Stir in the rice, herbs, and garlic, then cover and cook in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

  2. Rub the soup through a fine sieve and dilute with consomme to achieve a thinner consistency.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and sugar, then finish with sweet butter.

  4. Serve the soup with plain boiled rice on the side.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Ripe tomatoes
Break down into a puree that forms the body and flavour of the soup.
Rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks and gives it body.
Salt pork
Adds savoury fat and depth of flavour to the onions.
Onions
Soften and build a sweet, aromatic base for the soup.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Rubbing the soup through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked tomato and rice through a fine sieve removes skins and seeds and creates a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy or pulpy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pork, tomato, rice, garlic, pepper, sugar):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pork, tomato, rice, garlic, pepper, sugar. 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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