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Milk Soup

Milk Soup is a sweetened milk-based soup with toasted bread and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the milk

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

  2. Optionally, stir blanched almonds into the boiling milk before pouring.

Thicken and serve

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks and gradually add them to the milk, stirring over heat until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling and pour over the soaked 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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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 the yolks thicken into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they gently set with heat.
Toasted bread
Soaks up the hot custard, giving the soup a soft, bready body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk.

The step that matters

Removing the milk from heat once the yolks are added. Egg yolks set at a fairly low temperature, and if the custard gets too hot or keeps cooking, the proteins tighten and curdle. Taking it off the heat as soon as it thickens keeps it smooth.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, sugar, bread, egg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, sugar, bread, egg. 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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