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Soup

Milk Soup

A soup of potatoes, leeks, butter, milk, and tapioca, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and leek work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Cut the potatoes and leeks into quarters.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes, leeks, butter, salt, and pepper with 2 quarts of boiling water.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Strain through a colander and return to the saucepan.

Finish with milk

  1. Add the milk and sprinkle in the tapioca.

  2. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

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. Potato + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch breaks down as they boil, giving the soup body and thickness.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like flavour that becomes sweeter as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Crushed tapioca
Starch that swells and thickens the soup when it reaches a boil.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, mellow flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the tapioca while the soup is boiling. Tapioca starch thickens only when heated and needs a full boil to swell and soften. Added to a cooler liquid, it tends to clump, so the soup should be at a rolling boil before and during the final 15 minutes.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, pepper. 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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