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Soup

Turkish Soup

A creamy soup made with rice, tomatoes, onion, pepperberries, bay leaf, flour, butter, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 rice in the stock until soft.

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

  3. Combine the stock and tomatoes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Finish by stirring in butter and flour 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 as it cooks in the stock, adding body and thickening the soup.
Cooked tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a cream-style texture when stirred in with the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in butter and flour. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred well. Blending it with the butter first helps it disperse evenly so the soup thickens smoothly.

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.

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