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Cream of Vegetable Soup

A creamy soup made with vegetables, milk, and a roux of flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream of Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the milk and vegetable water, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook until the mixture thickens, then boil for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Press the vegetables through a sieve and add to the white sauce.

  2. Serve hot in plates.

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.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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

Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux that thickens the soup and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth white sauce when cooked with the fat.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the soup as the base liquid of the white sauce.
Vegetables
Provide the main flavour and, once pressed through a sieve, body to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and vegetable water gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring constantly lets the starch in the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Once the mixture has thickened, boiling it briefly cooks out the raw flour taste.

“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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