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Soup

Clear Tomato

A clear tomato soup made with tomatoes, onion, tomato liquor, spices, and thickened with arrowroot and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Clear Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes and onion.

Clarify and strain

  1. Combine tomatoes, onion, tomato liquor, peppercorns, mace, egg white and shell in a pot.

  2. Simmer the mixture, then strain through muslin.

Thicken and season

  1. Mix arrowroot with sherry and add to the strained liquid to thicken.

  2. Add food coloring and season with cayenne and salt as needed.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor and color of the soup base.
Egg white and shell
Attracts particles as it sets during simmering, helping the soup become clear.
Arrowroot
Thickens the strained liquid into a light, glossy body.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a subtle sweet-acid note to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer and strain through muslin. Simmering must be gentle so the egg white can bind particles without breaking the mixture apart. Straining afterward removes the coagulated solids, and a rough boil or pressing the muslin can leave the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, egg, arrowroot, sherry, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, egg, arrowroot, sherry, 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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