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Bezique Soup

A tomato soup made with canned tomatoes, boiling water, baking soda, butter, flour, salt, celery seed, and fresh milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bezique Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine canned tomatoes and boiling water in a pot.

  2. Add baking soda and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. In a separate bowl, cream butter, flour, and salt together.

  4. Stir the creamed mixture into the tomato soup.

  5. Add celery seed and heat through.

Finish and serve

  1. Add fresh milk and strain the soup before serving.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 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).

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 and acidic tomato flavor of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, reducing sourness and softening the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the soup's texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup when creamed with butter and stirred in.
Fresh milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, mellowing the tomato flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the tomatoes. Baking soda reacts with tomato acid and produces carbon dioxide, so it foams up hot liquid. Add it gradually in a large pot, and expect a sudden rise in volume, which can spill over.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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