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Soup

Tomato Bisque

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the bisque

  1. Strain the stewed tomatoes.

  2. Add baking soda while boiling.

  3. Stir in sweet milk, pepper, salt, sugar, and butter.

  4. Thicken with flour mixed with a little milk.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster crackers or toasted bread cut into small dice.

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. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Stewed tomatoes
Provide the main body and the sharp, acidic tomato flavor of the soup.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, rounded body that softens the tomato's sharpness.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, making the soup milder and less likely to curdle.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes for a rounder sweetness.

The step that matters

Add baking soda while boiling. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make milk curdle when the two are combined. Baking soda neutralizes some of that acid and foams briefly, so it should be fully stirred in before the milk goes in.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, sugar, butter, egg, flour, oyster. 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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