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Soup

Milk Soup

A milk-based soup with onions, turnip, celery, and flour thickener, served hot with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the minced onions, turnip, and celery in the stock or water until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked vegetables through a sieve and add them back to the liquid.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a little milk or water until smooth.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the vegetable liquid and stir well.

  5. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil, seasoning with salt, pepper, and sugar if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into the sweet, savoury base that gives the soup its body and flavour.
Turnip
Adds bulk and mild sweetness, and thickens the soup once rubbed through a sieve.
French potato flour
Thickens the liquid when stirred in, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour mixed with a little cold liquid first stays smooth; added directly to hot liquid it clumps. Stirring well while it is added lets the starch hydrate and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, celery, milk, potato, pepper, bread, sugar):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, celery, milk, potato, pepper, bread, sugar. 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.

More milk soup recipes

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