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Mock Bisque Soup

A creamy tomato bisque made with milk, butter, flour, 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

Make the white sauce

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper until smooth.

  4. Add the mixture to the hot milk.

  5. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring until smooth.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cook the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Mash the tomatoes through a strainer and add the baking soda.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the tomato mixture with the milk just before serving to prevent curdling.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor and a mildly acidic character.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, reducing the risk of the milk curdling.

The step that matters

Combining the tomato mixture with the milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make milk proteins clump and curdle when they meet hot milk. Adding the tomato mixture just before serving, and after the baking soda has neutralized some of the acid, keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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