Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Soup

A creamy tomato soup made with tomatoes, carrot, onion, herbs, stock, and enriched with butter, flour, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tomato Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes with the carrot, onion, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, black pepper, and parsley for 20 minutes until the carrot is tender.

  2. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

  3. Add the seasoned stock.

  4. Heat the mixture on the stove.

Finish and serve

  1. Make a roux with the butter and flour.

  2. Pour the roux over the soup mixture.

  3. Add the heated sweet cream mixed with baking soda, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco.

  4. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream on each cup of soup.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and acidity of the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, so the cream is less likely to curdle.
Seasoned stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the soup base.

The step that matters

Adding the cream mixture. Cream can curdle when it meets acidic tomato at high heat. Baking soda neutralises some of the acid, and gentle heating helps keep the soup smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, carrot, clove, pepper, parsley, butter, flour):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Eggplantbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, clove, pepper, parsley, butter, flour. 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.

More tomato soup recipes

Cream 27Clear 14Creamed 10Creamy 8French 8with Rice 8 See all 632 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesTomato FrittersTomato Fritters23 recipesTomato PureeTomato Puree23 recipes