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Parker House Tomato Soup

A hearty tomato soup with beef stock, root vegetables, and a flour-thickened base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

Parker House Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, combine beef stock, carrot, turnip, beets, and onions.

  2. Add fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Strain through a colander, mashing the vegetables.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, dissolve flour in cold water.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the strained soup along with melted butter, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Return to the stove, stir until it boils.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Skim off any foam and serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a fuller body.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the vegetable flavors.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and a deep color to the soup.

The step that matters

Dissolving the flour in cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules form lumps before they can disperse. Mixing it smoothly in cold water first lets it blend evenly, so when the soup returns to a boil it thickens without lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

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