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Tomato Soup, with Kick

A tomato soup flavored with onions, butter, parsley, flour, stock, rice, and a kick of pepper and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Soup, with Kick

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Fry the onion slices in butter over medium heat in a sauté pan.

  2. Add the chopped tomatoes and parsley.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the onion and parsley.

  5. Pass the tomato mixture through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Melt butter the size of a pigeon's egg in the same pan until it bubbles.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Stir in the tomato pulp.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Add stock if using.

  6. Return the soup to the heat.

  7. When hot, stir in the cooked rice and baking soda.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,065 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the onion into the base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and tomato mixture into a smoother soup.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and body, thickening the soup as it heats.
Baking soda
Neutralises some of the tomato acidity and helps the soup brown slightly.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in butter. Cooking the flour for a full minute removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stirring in the tomato pulp too early can leave lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, parsley, flour, pepper, rice):

  1. Okrabetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, parsley, flour, pepper, rice. 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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