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Tomato Bisque

A tomato soup made with beef stock, flour, butter, and sweet milk, finished with crackers and fried stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Bisque

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomato Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare strong beef stock by boiling lean beef, celery, onion, and parsley.

Make the bisque

  1. Rub together flour and butter in a bowl.

  2. Add strained tomatoes to the flour-butter mixture and stir until boiling.

  3. Add salt and pepper.

  4. Pour the mixture into the beef stock and boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Stir in kitchen bouquet.

  6. Add baking soda and let it foam.

  7. Add sweet milk (or cream) and season to taste.

  8. Bring to a boil.

  9. Add the rolled crackers.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried stale bread squares.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the bisque when combined with butter and tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and binds with flour to start the thickening.
Strained tomatoes
Provide the main tomato body, acidity, and flavour of the bisque.
Beef stock
Forms the savoury liquid base of the soup.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic tomatoes, causing foaming and changing the flavour and colour.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and softens the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda to the tomato mixture. Baking soda reacts with the acid in tomatoes, releasing carbon dioxide so it foams up quickly. Adding it too fast or before the acid is well blended can cause it to boil over, and milk added afterward may curdle if the soup is too acidic or boiled too hard.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, beef, milk, bread. 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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