Skip to main content
Main

Canned Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made by boiling tomatoes, celery, onions, parsley, bay leaves, cloves, then thickening with butter and flour, canned while hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Canned Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the ripe tomatoes in a large pot until thoroughly cooked.

  2. In another pot, boil the chopped celery, onions, parsley, bay leaves, and cloves together.

  3. Combine the boiled mixture with the tomatoes and strain through a cloth.

Season and can

  1. Thicken the strained soup with butter and flour, then add salt, sugar, and paprika.

  2. Can the soup while hot.

Serve

  1. When serving, add 1-2 cups of milk or cream to each pint 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.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the soup base.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the soup base.

The step that matters

Thicken the strained soup with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the fat and heated in the liquid to thicken smoothly; adding it raw or in clumps leaves lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, parsley, clove, butter, flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes