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Soup

Tapioca and Tomato Soup

A soup made with tapioca, tomatoes, carrots, turnip, herbs, mace, butter, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tapioca and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, wash, and finely chop the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stew the vegetables for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the water, skinned and sliced tomatoes, herbs, and seasoning.

  3. Once boiling, sprinkle in the tapioca and cook until tender.

  4. Pass the soup through a sieve.

  5. Return the soup to the saucepan.

  6. Bring the soup to a boil 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.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,252 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

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smooth, slightly silky body.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the vegetables stew.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the base.
Turnip
Adds mild body and earthy flavour to the base.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the tapioca once the soup is boiling. Tapioca starch thickens when heated in liquid but can clump if dropped into cold liquid. Adding it slowly to boiling water while stirring keeps it dispersed, and it must cook fully to become tender and lose its raw starchy taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

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