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Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with ham, onion, carrots, celery, and stock, finished with flour and butter.

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 celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a pan, fry the diced ham and sliced onion in the clarified dripping until browned.

  2. Simmer the stock or water with the carrot, bay leaf, celery, and peppercorns for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. Add the tomatoes (if fresh, stew until tender) and simmer for another 45 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve, then stir in the flour and butter over low heat until smooth.

  3. Continue stirring until it boils, season to taste, and serve with small pieces of fried 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup once simmered and sieved.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body when cooked with the butter.
Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and smooths the thickened texture.
Ham
Adds savoury, browned flavour from frying at the start.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in the dripping.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and butter. Flour added to hot liquid clumps easily. Stirring over low heat while adding it keeps the mixture smooth, and continued stirring as it boils cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens it evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Leekabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Turnipabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, carrot, celery, tomato, butter, flour. 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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