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Soup

Corn and Tomato Soup

A soup made with water from boiled mutton, tomatoes, corn, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Save the water from boiling a leg of mutton and let it cool.

  2. Remove the fat from the cooled water.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the tomatoes and corn (including the cobs) to the water.

  2. Boil slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Strain through a colander and serve.

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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + tomatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 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

Mutton water
Provides the savoury meaty liquid base of the soup.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity, sweetness and moisture that give the soup its body.
Corn
Adds natural sweetness and starch that gives the soup body.
Corn cobs
Release extra corn flavour into the liquid during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 4 hours. A gentle, steady simmer draws flavour out of the cobs, corn and tomatoes gradually. A hard boil can break the vegetables down unevenly and make the soup cloudy and harsh-tasting.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, corn, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, corn, pepper. 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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