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Tomato Bisque

A creamy tomato soup made with milk, butter, flour, baking soda, canned tomatoes, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tomato Bisque

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 ↓

Tomato Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, and ½ teaspoon of baking soda.

Make the bisque

  1. Boil 1 quart of canned tomatoes and stir in the butter-flour mixture, then continue stirring until it boils.

  2. Add the boiling milk, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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
Adds creamy body and dairy richness to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
Baking soda
Neutralises some of the tomatoes' acidity, making the milk less likely to curdle.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and the base of the soup, along with their acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make milk curdle, especially when both are hot. The baking soda in the butter-flour mixture neutralises some of that acid, which helps keep the milk smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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