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Mock Bisque

A tomato and milk bisque flavored with butter, salt, sugar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mock Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk to boiling, then set it aside to cool slightly.

  2. Heat and strain the tomatoes.

Make the bisque

  1. Return the strained tomatoes to the stove and add the butter, salt, and sugar.

  2. Boil for a minute, then add the baking soda.

  3. Stir in the milk and heat while stirring constantly.

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

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the creamy body and base of the bisque.
Tomatoes
Supply the main flavor and acidity of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, raising the pH to help keep the milk from curdling.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk while heating. Milk proteins can curdle when they meet hot, acidic tomatoes. Stirring constantly spreads the heat and the milk evenly, and the baking soda, which neutralizes acid, helps prevent curdling.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar. 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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