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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with tomatoes, water, onion, sugar, salt, pepper, butter, cornstarch, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Mix the cornstarch with the cold water in a stewpan with all the other ingredients except the butter and flour.

  2. Stir frequently until the soup boils, then cook for 30 minutes from the time it begins to boil.

  3. Beat the butter and flour together until light and smooth, then stir into the soup.

  4. Cook for an additional 10 minutes, then remove the whole onion.

Finish and serve

  1. For a smooth soup, strain through a fine sieve.

  2. Serve the soup with toasted or fried bread, or add stale bread pieces to the bottom of the soup tureen.

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

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid base of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Helps thicken the soup when blended with butter.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and flour together until light and smooth. Lumps of flour stirred into hot soup stay separate and do not thicken evenly. Blending them into the butter first helps the flour disperse smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, pepper, butter, flour. 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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