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Mock Bisque Soup

A tomato-based soup made with milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

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 until soft enough to strain easily, then use the strained juice.

  2. Add the baking soda to the strained tomato juice to prevent the acid from curdling the milk.

Make the milk base

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a separate pan, heat the butter and add the flour, mixing in enough milk to make it pour easily.

  3. Add this mixture to the heated milk and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Combine and serve

  1. Once the gas has passed off, combine the tomatoes with the milk mixture.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and serve immediately with croutons.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the acidic liquid and body of the soup, forming its main flavor.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, pourable base.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acid so it does not curdle the milk.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the tomato juice. Tomato acid can curdle milk when the two meet. Baking soda neutralizes acid and releases gas, so it must be fully reacted and the gas allowed to pass off before the tomatoes are combined with the milk.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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