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Tomato Soup with Macaroni

A tomato soup with macaroni, flavored with mushroom ketchup, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Tomato Soup with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the stock and tomatoes together for 15 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and gradually stir in the stock. Boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Cook the macaroni, cut it into small pieces, and add it to the soup along with the mushroom ketchup. Serve hot.

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

  1. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 once boiled and strained.
Flour
Thickens the stock with the melted butter, giving the soup body.
Macaroni
Adds bite and substance to the soup as the cooked pasta pieces.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Flour must be cooked briefly in the fat and stock gradually stirred in, or the soup can turn lumpy. Boiling for the stated 2 minutes helps the starch swell fully and thicken smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup, pepper. 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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