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Plain Milk Soup

A simple soup made by boiling milk, seasoning with salt and sugar, thickening with corn starch, and served over fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plain Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Season with salt and sugar.

  3. Thicken the milk with corn starch.

  4. For rice or sago soup, boil rice or sago in a quart of milk.

  5. Add sugar and yolks if liked.

  6. Add yolks of eggs for improved flavor, if desired.

Serve

  1. When serving, pour the soup over blocks of fried bread.

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. Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 carries all the other flavors.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly body-filled soup as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a smoother, creamier texture to the soup.
Rice or sago
Softens as it boils in the milk, adding body and a starchy texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with corn starch. Corn starch must be fully heated in the liquid to swell and thicken; if it is added to milk that is not hot enough or not stirred, it stays lumpy or thin.

“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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