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Milk Soup

A soup made with onions, turnip, celery, stock or water, milk, and thickened with flour, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Mince the onions, turnip, and celery.

  2. Boil the vegetables in a pint of stock or water until done.

  3. Rub the vegetables through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sieved vegetables to a pint of milk.

  2. Let it boil.

  3. Season and thicken with the flour mixed in a little milk or water.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into a sweet, savoury base that gives the soup body once sieved.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the vegetable purée.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup and adds richness.
French potato flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup a smooth, velvety body.

The step that matters

Letting the milk boil before thickening. Milk can scorch on the bottom of the pan and boil over quickly, so it needs watching. Starch thickens best in a hot liquid, so the flour mixture should be stirred in evenly to avoid lumps.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, milk, potato, bread. 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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