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Parker House Tomato Soup

A tomato soup made with beef stock, root vegetables, and tomatoes, thickened with flour and butter.

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

Parker House Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine beef stock, carrot, turnip, beets, and onions in a large pot.

  2. Add fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander, mashing the vegetables.

Thicken and serve

  1. Dissolve flour in cold water in a separate bowl.

  2. Mix the flour mixture with melted butter.

  3. Return the strained soup to the pot.

  4. Stir in the flour mixture, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  5. Stir until the soup boils.

  6. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  7. Skim off any foam.

  8. 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.

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

Flour
Thickens the soup into a smoother, heavier body when it boils.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the thickened soup a rounder mouthfeel.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and a deep red colour to the soup.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars in the stock.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup with the flour mixture. Flour must be dissolved fully in cold water before it goes in. Added dry or to hot liquid, it clumps, and the soup stays lumpy instead of smoothly thickened.

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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