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Tomato Soup

A savory soup made with ham, tomatoes, stock, and aromatics.

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

Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,476 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the shallots, peppercorns, cloves, thyme, mace, bay leaves, and ham.

  2. Fry until the mixture colors.

  3. Add the tomatoes, stock, and essence of mushrooms.

  4. Boil quickly until thick.

  5. Pass through a sieve into another saucepan and warm up again.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the aromatics and helps the ham and shallots brown in the pan.
Lean raw ham
Adds savoury, meaty depth that browns during frying and flavours the stock.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic tomato flavour, thickening as they reduce.
Rich stock
Supplies the liquid base that the tomatoes break down into and reduces to a thick soup.

The step that matters

Fry until the mixture colors. Browning the shallots and ham builds deeper, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flatter soup, while over-browning can turn it bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, clove, thyme, ham, tomato, mushroom):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, clove, thyme, ham, tomato, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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