Name: Tomato Soup
Ingredients: 1 shin of veal or 4 cups soup stock; 2 onions, chopped; 2 carrots, chopped; 2 turnips, chopped; 1 dozen tomatoes; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; bread, for toasting

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

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Boil the shin of veal for 3 hours, or use soup stock.
Add chopped onions, carrots, turnips, pepper, salt, and tomatoes.
Boil for 2 hours, then strain through a sieve.

Serve

Toast bread until light brown, then cut into dice.
Serve the soup over the toast just before serving.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together21,601 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 body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Onions: Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Carrots: Add sweetness and body to the soup as they cook down.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and body as they cook down in the broth.
Bread: Adds a crisp, toasted texture that soaks up a little of the soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, tomato, pepper, bread):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Parsnipbetter flavor fit
Leekbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, tomato, pepper, bread. 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.