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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water, sugar, salt, cloves, peppercorns, butter, onion, flour, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine the canned tomatoes, hot water, sugar, salt, cloves, and peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Cook until the tomatoes are soft enough to strain.

Make the roux and finish

  1. Melt the butter and add the chopped onion, then cook until the onion is yellow.

  2. Stir in the flour, then slowly add the tomato mixture.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and cook until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.

  4. Strain through a sieve and serve immediately with croutons.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and tomato mixture.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the tomato mixture to the flour. Stirring flour into hot butter and then adding liquid slowly helps prevent lumps, because the flour grains must be coated and dispersed before they can thicken evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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