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Soup

Clear Tomato Soup

A clear soup made with tomato juice, onion, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and basil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Clear Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter over medium heat in a pot.

  2. Add chopped onion and sauté until translucent.

  3. Stir in tomato juice, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring to a simmer.

  5. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and fresh basil 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. Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Tomato + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato juice
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its tomato flavor.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and helps soften the onion.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, sugar, pepper, lemon, basil):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, sugar, pepper, lemon, basil. 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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