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Tomato Bisque Soup

A creamy tomato soup made with stewed tomatoes, milk, flour, butter, and seasonings.

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

Tomato Bisque Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the tomatoes in a pot.

  2. Heat the milk in a double boiler, reserving ½ cup to mix with the flour.

  3. Mix the flour smoothly with the reserved milk.

  4. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and cook for 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the baking soda to the stewed tomatoes and stir well.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Combine the strained tomatoes with the milk, adding butter, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. 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 flavor, acidity and liquid body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and makes up most of the soup's liquid.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich base.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a silkier mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Neutralizes tomato acidity, which helps keep the milk from curdling.

The step that matters

Combining the tomatoes with the milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can curdle hot milk. Adding baking soda to the stewed tomatoes first neutralizes much of that acid, and straining makes the mixture smooth before it meets the milk.

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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