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Duchess Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, onions, butter, flour, cheese, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Duchess 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 ↓

Duchess Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a pan, fry the butter and onions together for 8 minutes.

  3. Add the flour and cook for 2 more minutes without burning.

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

  5. Strain the soup and return it to the heat.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the grated cheese.

  2. Beat the eggs with a pinch of pepper and salt.

  3. Pour the beaten eggs into the soup while stirring.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavors.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when frying the onions.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Eggs
Set when stirred into the hot soup, adding body and richness.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pour the beaten eggs into the soup while stirring. Egg proteins set with heat, so adding them to hot soup while stirring keeps them dispersed in fine strands instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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