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Soup

Tapioca and Tomato Soup

A tomato soup with tapioca, carrots, turnip, herbs, mace, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tapioca and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, wash, and finely chop the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stew the vegetables for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the water, skinned and sliced tomatoes, herbs, and seasoning.

  3. Sprinkle in the tapioca.

  4. Cook until tender.

  5. Pass the soup through a sieve.

  6. Return the strained soup to the saucepan.

  7. Bring the soup to a boil 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour, acidity, and liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the vegetables as they stew.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup base.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour and body to the soup base.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the tapioca. Tapioca added in one clump can form lumps that stay hard in the liquid. Sprinkling it in slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly before it thickens as the soup cooks.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper. 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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