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Soup

Duchess Soup

A creamy cheese and egg soup made with onions, butter, flour, milk, American cheese, and egg yolks.

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

Duchess Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the onions in butter until soft.

  2. Add flour and stir to combine.

  3. Pour in the hot milk and bring to a boil, cooking for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and add American cheese, white pepper, and salt.

  5. Strain in the beaten egg yolks and stir well.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Onions
Softened in butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the soup.
Butter
Fat that softens the onions and carries their flavour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the main liquid of the soup, thickened by the flour and cooked to a boil.
American cheese
Adds richness and a mild, creamy savoury flavour to the soup.
Egg yolks
Stirred in at the end to enrich and thicken the soup slightly.

The step that matters

Strain in the beaten egg yolks and stir well. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot or boiling when they are added. Stirring well and keeping the soup below a boil helps them blend smoothly and thicken it evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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