Name: Tomato
Ingredients: 3 lbs beef; 1 qt canned tomatoes; 1 gallon water; Salt to taste

Why it works: Beef and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato

Ingredients

3 lbs beef
1 qt canned tomatoes
1 gallon water
Salt to taste

Directions

Boil the beef and water for 2 hours until reduced to about 2 quarts.
Stir in the canned tomatoes and simmer for 45 minutes.
Season to taste, strain, 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 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

Beef: Gives the broth its meaty flavor and body as it simmers and reduces.
Canned tomatoes: Provide acidity, sweetness and the main tomato flavor and color of the soup.

“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.