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Cream of Tomato, or Mock Bisque

A creamy tomato soup made by stewing tomatoes with spices, then blending with milk and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream of Tomato, or Mock Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes, water, cloves, peppercorns, sugar, and baking soda together until the tomatoes are tender.

  2. Strain the mixture, removing the skin and seeds.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the cold milk, stirring constantly until it forms a smooth sauce.

  3. Add 1 pint of the stewed and strained tomatoes.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat until scalding hot and serve immediately.

  2. If the soup curdles, beat it with a Dover egg-beater until smooth.

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.

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

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

  2. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavor of the soup.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, rich texture to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce with butter.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acidity, reducing sharpness.

The step that matters

Adding the cold milk to the hot tomatoes. Tomato acid can make milk curdle when the two are combined, especially when very hot. Adding the milk to the flour-butter base and keeping it smooth, then heating gently just until scalding, helps keep the soup stable.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, clove, sugar, 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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