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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with beef broth, vegetables, and a roux of butter, flour, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the beef soup with the carrot, turnip, beet, and onions for 45 minutes in a large pot.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add the can of tomatoes.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain again.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the roux and finish

  1. Heat the butter in a separate saucepan until light brown.

  2. Add the flour to the butter.

  3. Mix well off the heat.

  4. Stir in the sugar.

  5. Return to heat until it boils.

  6. Boil for 15 minutes.

  7. Strain.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Beef soup
Forms the liquid base that the vegetables cook into.
Tomatoes
Provide the main tomato flavour and acidity.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Onions
Add savoury aroma and body as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the butter until light brown and then stirring in flour off the heat helps prevent lumps and gives a toasted, nutty flavour. Returning it to heat only after it is smooth lets the roux thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour, sugar. 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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