Skip to main content
Soup

Mock Bisque Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mock Bisque Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Make the tomato base

  1. Cook the tomatoes with sugar and sliced onion for 15 minutes.

  2. Add baking soda and pass through a sieve.

Make the white sauce and serve

  1. Make a white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and whisking in milk until boiling.

  2. Stir in the hot tomato mixture, season with salt, and 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 main body and tart flavor of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acidity so the milk is less likely to curdle.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor in the white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Creates the creamy, smooth base that gives the soup its body.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes for a rounder sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the hot tomato mixture into the white sauce. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can curdle hot milk. Baking soda reduces that acidity first, so the soup stays smooth. Serve right away, since the soup can separate if it sits.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, onion, butter, flour, milk. 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.

You might also like

Tomato BisqueTomato Bisque11 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes