Skip to main content
Main

Rice and Tomato Soup

A soup made with rice, tomatoes, butter, and seasonings, served over toasted whole wheat bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,065 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil rice in 2 quarts of water until tender.

  2. Season with salt and butter.

  3. Move kettle to the side and add cooked, strained tomatoes.

  4. Sweeten with baking soda, then season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve over toasted whole wheat bread.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Rice + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Tomato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooks down into the soup, adding body and a thick, starchy texture.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, acidity, and liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Baking soda
Raises the pH, mellowing the tomatoes' acidity.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.

The step that matters

Sweeten with baking soda, then season. Baking soda reacts with the tomato acid and can quickly cause a soapy, metallic taste or foaming if added in excess. Add a small pinch and taste before seasoning further.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes