Soup – Why do gazpacho recipes have you put garlic and salt together, then mash with an egg

Taste-wise there will be little to not difference in the result. Just be careful to use the proper ratio of garlic to salt (generally 3-to-1 salt to garlic powder).

One of the first things I learned in Indian cooking is that the combination of tomatoes, onions and ginger is self-thickening. As time went by, I realised that the thickening effect is far more noticable with old varieties of tomatoes - "beef" tomatoes and a lot of the modern varieties are difficult to thicken unless partially fried first.

Despite the absence of ginger, I suspect that the thickening is purely a natural action between the tomatoes and the onion, and that the tomatoes used were some particularly nice old variety.