Skip to main content
Drink

Turkish Soup

A creamy rice and tomato soup seasoned with pepper, bay leaf, salt, celery salt, and finished with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Turkish Soup

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the rice in the stock until soft.

  2. Add seasonings to the strained tomatoes and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Combine the stock and tomatoes, then rub through a sieve.

  4. Finish by adding flour and butter to create a cream soup.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Rice
Softens into the stock, adding body and thickening the soup as it breaks down.
Cooked tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and colour of the soup once strained.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes creamy in texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished soup a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding flour and butter at the end. Flour needs to be cooked into the hot liquid so it thickens smoothly; if added to a boiling soup in lumps it can clump and leave a pasty texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, tomato, flour, celery, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Rice WaterRice Water82 recipesRice MilkRice Milk37 recipesGround Rice MilkGround Rice Milk7 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes