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
Combine tomatoes, bay leaf, parsley, and mace in a saucepan. Cover and cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
Press the cooked tomatoes through a fine sieve to remove seeds and place the resulting liquid in a soup tureen.
Make the milk sauce
Heat the milk in a double boiler.
In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour, then add to the milk and stir until thickened.
Combine and serve
Add sugar and baking soda to the tomatoes, then quickly pour in the boiling milk.
Stir well and serve immediately.
Do not reheat the soup after mixing the milk and tomatoes, or they will separate.
If not serving right away, keep the tomatoes and milk hot separately.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,398 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together16,675 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Forms the creamy body of the soup and gives it its smooth, rich texture.
- Tomatoes
- Provide the main flavor and acidity that give the soup its character.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce through starch gelatinization.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the thickened milk.
- Baking soda
- Neutralizes tomato acidity, reducing curdling risk when the milk is added.
The step that matters
Pour the boiling milk into the tomatoes quickly and serve at once. Tomato acid can curdle milk proteins when they meet, and reheating the mixed soup makes the separation worse. Adding the hot milk quickly and serving straight away keeps the soup smooth.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, tomato, butter, parsley, sugar, flour):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Cardamomfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, tomato, butter, parsley, sugar, 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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