Skip to main content
Main

General Recipe for Milk-vegetable Soups

A simple milk-based soup thickened with flour and butter, flavored with salt and cooked vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

General Recipe for Milk-vegetable Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, thicken the milk with the flour as you would for milk gravy.

  2. Add the butter, salt, and the prepared vegetable to the thickened milk.

  3. If the soup is too thick, thin it with additional milk or water.

Serve

  1. For serving, add a pinch of baking soda to prevent the milk from curdling.

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).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body and a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother mouthfeel.
Thoroughly cooked vegetable
Supplies the main flavor and solid texture of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda for serving. Milk curdles when it is heated or when acidic ingredients are present. Baking soda raises the pH slightly, which helps keep the milk smooth. Using too much can leave a soapy or bitter taste, so only a pinch should be added.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes