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Milk Soup

A milk soup thickened with egg yolks and soaked bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Lay toasted bread slices in a tureen and pour hot milk over them.

  2. Cover the tureen to let the bread soak.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with salt, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and gradually add them to the milk.

  3. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens, then remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling.

  4. Pour the thickened milk over the soaked bread in the tureen.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 that soaks the bread and becomes the thickened custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Toasted bread
Absorbs the hot milk and soft-soaks, giving the soup body and texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk and yolks over low heat. Egg yolk proteins set gradually as they warm. Too much heat, or too long, scrambles the yolks and makes the custard grainy or curdled, so the mixture must be stirred gently and removed from heat as soon as it thickens.

“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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