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Tomato Soup

A simple soup made with tomatoes, vegetables, stock, and milk, simmered and strained.

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

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the vegetables into squares.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, fry the vegetables in butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour, stock, tomatoes, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve using a wooden spoon.

Finish

  1. Stir in the milk and bring to a boil for 3-4 minutes.

  2. If desired, add carmine to achieve the desired tomato color.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + carrottop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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, with acidity that balances the sweet vegetables.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and softens the onion, carrot and turnip as they fry.
Flour
Thickens the soup so that it becomes smooth and creamy rather than watery.
Milk
Adds richness and mellows the tomato acidity, giving a softer, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes fibres, giving a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

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