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Soup

Tomato Soup for Four

A simple tomato soup made with onion, butter, parsley, canned tomatoes, rice, and stock or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,065 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Soup for Four

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the onion in butter until brown.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a sieve and add to the onion.

  3. Add enough stock or hot water to the mixture.

Simmer and season

  1. Stir in the rice and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Season to taste.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the soup.
Butter
Fat carries flavour and helps the onion brown evenly.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour, acidity and the body of the soup.
Rice
Its starch softens and thickens the soup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice. Rice needs enough liquid and a gentle simmer to cook through and release starch for thickening. Too little liquid or too much heat can leave it hard or cause it to scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

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

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Celeryabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, tomato, rice. 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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