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Soup

Milk, or Cream Soup

A simple soup made from milk or cream thickened with butter and flour or corn starch, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk, or Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk or cream in a pot.

  2. Add the butter and stir until melted.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the flour or corn starch with a little cold milk to create a slurry.

  4. Add the slurry to the pot and stir until the soup thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot soup over the toasted bread pieces.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or cream
Forms the liquid base of the soup and provides richness.
Flour or corn starch
Thickens the soup when heated with liquid, giving it body.
Sweet butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich flavor and mouthfeel.
Toasted bread
Soaks up the hot soup and gives it a crisp-soft contrast in texture.

The step that matters

Adding the slurry to the hot soup. Starch must be mixed with cold liquid first so it disperses evenly; added as dry powder it clumps. Once it is stirred into the hot milk, the starch swells and thickens the soup.

“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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