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Duchess Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, onions, eggs, butter, flour, cheese, 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

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a pot.

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

  3. Add the flour to the onion mixture and stir well.

  4. Gradually add the boiling milk to the mixture, stirring constantly.

  5. Beat the eggs in a bowl and temper them with a little of the hot soup, then stir back into the pot.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and stir in the grated cheese before serving.

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.
Eggs
Thicken the soup gently and add richness when tempered into the hot liquid.
Butter
Carries the onions and adds richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the fat and milk.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aroma as they soften in butter.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Tempering the eggs. Adding raw eggs straight into hot soup can scramble them. Beating the eggs and mixing in a little hot soup first gradually raises their temperature, so they blend smoothly and thicken the soup evenly.

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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