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 ↓
Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grind the vegetables through a meat chopper, saving any juices that are released.
Cover the ground vegetables with water, using as little as possible to keep the soup thick.
Cook and strain
Cook over a slow fire for 2-3 hours.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to separate the juice from the pulp.
If desired, squeeze the pulp through a potato ricer to extract more juice.
Serve
Serve the soup warm, adding milk, salt, and butter to taste if desired.
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.
-
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Non-starchy vegetables
- Provide the main body, flavor, and substance of the soup once ground and cooked down.
- Water
- Creates the cooking liquid; using little keeps the soup thick and concentrated.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and a mild richness when stirred into the warm soup.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Covering the ground vegetables with as little water as possible. Too much water dilutes the vegetables' starch and pectin-rich pulp, so the soup stays thin and loses body during the long slow cook.
“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.
More vegetable soup recipes
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.