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Mock Bisque Soup

A tomato-based soup thickened with milk and flour, flavored with butter, salt, pepper, 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew the tomatoes in a pot.

  2. Add the baking soda to the tomatoes. Stir the tomatoes well.

  3. Rub the tomato mixture through a fine strainer to remove seeds.

Make the milk base

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Reserve ½ cup of the milk to mix with the flour. Mix the flour smoothly with the reserved cold milk.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Cook the mixture for 10 minutes.

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

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the milk mixture with the strained tomatoes.

  2. 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the soup a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acidity, which helps keep the milk from curdling.

The step that matters

Combine the milk mixture with the strained tomatoes. Acidic tomatoes can curdle hot milk when the two are mixed. Baking soda is added to the tomatoes first to reduce acidity, and the milk should be kept hot but not boiling when combined.

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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