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Tomato Soup

A hearty beef and vegetable soup with tomatoes, seasoned with butter, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Soup

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 ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the beef with a little salt for 1 hour.

  2. Add the beet, carrot, turnip, and onions to the pot and boil for another 1½ hours.

  3. Add the tomatoes and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. In a pan, heat the butter until brown.

  2. Mix in the flour until smooth.

  3. Return the strained soup to the heat.

  4. Add the butter and flour mixture, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  5. Stir continuously for 5 minutes.

  6. Serve with croutons.

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 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

Lean beef
Provides savory body and flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Supply the main body, acidity and color of the soup.
Butter
Browned with flour to add nutty aroma and fat for a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with the butter into a roux.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour mixture. Browning the butter and cooking the flour lightly lets the starch thicken the soup smoothly without lumps and adds a nutty flavor. Stirring constantly prevents scorching and clumping when the roux meets the hot soup.

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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