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Mock Bisque Soup

A tomato-based bisque soup made with milk, flour, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mock Bisque Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mock Bisque Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Start the base

  1. Stew the tomato in a pot.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil in a double boiler.

  3. Reserve ½ cup of the boiling milk to mix with the flour.

  4. Mix the flour smoothly with the reserved cold milk.

  5. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  6. Cook the mixture for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the baking soda to the stewed tomato.

  2. Stir the tomato with baking soda well.

  3. Strain the tomato mixture.

  4. Add butter, salt, and pepper to the milk.

  5. Combine the milk mixture with the strained tomato.

  6. Serve immediately.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato
Provides the main flavour, acidity and body of the soup.
Milk
Supplies the creamy liquid that makes up most of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Neutralises some of the tomato's acidity, which helps keep the milk from curdling.

The step that matters

Combine the milk mixture with the strained tomato. Tomato is acidic, and acid can cause hot milk to curdle or separate. The baking soda added to the tomato neutralises much of that acid beforehand, so the two mixtures should be joined smoothly and served right away.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, pepper. 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.

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