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Tomato Soup with Onions

A tomato soup flavored with onions, celery, carrot, and stock, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

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

  2. Remove the onions and fry the tomatoes just until heated through.

  3. Put the tomatoes and their juices into a stew pan with the onions, celery, and carrot.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stew for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the stock or gravy and stew for another 30 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve 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.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

Onions
Browned in butter, they add sweetness and deep savoury flavour to the soup.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and fresh tomato flavour of the soup.
Stock or gravy
Supplies the liquid that turns the vegetables into a soup and adds savoury depth.
Celery
Adds a subtle aromatic, vegetal background flavour as it stews.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body as it softens during stewing.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning the onions in butter triggers the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which build deep, sweet, roasted flavour. Pale onions leave the soup tasting flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, celery, carrot, 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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