Name: Tomato Soup
Ingredients: 2-3 quarts stock (beef, ham, veal, or bones); 1 onion, chopped; 1 carrot, chopped; Optional: a little celery or fresh parsley, chopped; Salt and pepper to taste; Fresh tomatoes, peeled and sliced

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

2-3 quarts stock (beef, ham, veal, or bones)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
Optional: a little celery or fresh parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh tomatoes, peeled and sliced

Directions

Combine the stock with the onion, carrot, and optional celery or parsley in a large soup kettle.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Add the sliced tomatoes to thicken the stock.
Bring to a boil and let it simmer for 2 hours.
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.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,606 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

Fresh tomatoes: Provide the main flavour and body of the soup as they break down during simmering.
Stock: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Onion: Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens into the broth.
Carrot: Adds subtle sweetness and body to the simmering broth.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, pepper, tomato):

Celerythe original
Cuminabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, pepper, tomato. 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.