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Portuguese Soup

A hearty soup of onions, tomatoes, stale bread, butter, and cheese, seasoned with herbs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Portuguese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Add the peeled and sliced tomatoes, water, herbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture boil gently for 1 hour.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the bread into dice and place it in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread, cover, and let it stand for 10 minutes to soak.

  3. Sprinkle the grated cheese over the soup before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried until brown, they add sweetness and deep savoury flavour to the broth.
Tomatoes
Break down during boiling to add acidity, body and moisture to the soup.
Stale wholemeal bread
Soaks up the hot soup, becoming soft and giving the dish its body.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the onions brown.
Grated cheese
Melts over the hot soup, adding richness and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning onions develops sweet, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions give a flat-tasting soup, so they need patient, even heat rather than high heat that scorches them.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cheese, bread, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cheese, bread, butter, 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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