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Tomato Soup

A simple tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, water, flour, butter, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the tomatoes and hot water and bring to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, and 1 spoonful of the tomato mixture until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling tomato mixture.

  4. Add the salt and sugar, and boil for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the soup through a sieve and serve with toasted bread.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, smoothing the flour into the liquid and softening the flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into a smooth paste before adding it to the soup. Flour dropped straight into hot liquid clumps as its starch gelatinises unevenly. Mixing it first with butter and a spoonful of tomato liquid lets each particle separate and hydrate, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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