Home › Soups › Mock Bisque Soup
Mock Bisque Soup
2 cups raw or canned tomatoes Bit of bay leaf 2 teaspoons sugar 3/4 cup stale bread crumbs 1/3 teaspoon soda 4 cups milk 1/2 onion, stuck with 6 cloves 1/2 tablespoon salt Sprig of parsley 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/3 cup butter Scald milk with bread crumbs, onion, parsley, and bay leaf. Remove seasonings and rub through a sieve. Cook tomatoes with sugar fifteen minutes; add soda and rub through a sieve. Reheat bread and milk to boiling-point, add tomatoes, and pour at once into tureen over butter, salt, and pepper. Serve with croutons, crisp crackers, or souffled crackers.
A cream of tomato soup thickened with bread rather than a roux, held together by a pinch of soda. The whole thing turns on the last thirty seconds.
- The hinge: combine off the heat, at the last momentThe hinge: combine at the last moment -- Tomato acid curdles hot milk. The recipe has you reheat the bread and milk to boiling point, add the tomatoes, and pour at once into the tureen over the butter and seasonings; serve immediately rather than letting the mixed soup stand or return it to the stove.
- What the soda doesThe soda neutralises part of the tomato acid so the milk is less likely to break. A third of a teaspoon in two cups of tomato is about right; more will give a soapy, flat taste and grey the colour.
- Bread crumbs"Stale bread crumbs" here means crumbs from a day-old loaf rather than the fine dried packaged sort. They are the only thickener, so use a plain white loaf and let them soften fully in the scalded milk before sieving.
- Scalding milkScald means bringing the milk just to a shiver at the edges, around 180F, with the crumbs, onion, parsley and bay. The recipe gives no infusion time for this step.
- Onion stuck with clovesHalf an onion pierced with six whole cloves is a long-standing flavouring device that keeps the cloves retrievable. Pull it out before sieving; six cloves in a soup of about six cups is assertive but not medicinal.
- SievingPushing the milk-and-crumb mixture through a sieve gives the body. A food mill or fine strainer with the back of a ladle does the same work; a blender will make it smoother than the original intended, which is no loss.
- Canned tomatoesCanned tomatoes of the period were generally plain packed tomatoes rather than salted or pureed. Use whole canned tomatoes with their juice, not passata or sauce, and taste before adding the full half tablespoon of salt.
- Butter and yieldA third cup of butter is generous by modern habit and can be halved without harming the texture. As written this makes roughly six cups, serving four to six.