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Soup

Cream Soup

A soup made from cold cooked vegetable pulp thickened with butter, flour, milk, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pass the cold cooked vegetables through a sieve to get 1 cup of pulp.

Make the soup

  1. In a hot saucepan, combine the butter and flour, stirring until smooth and bubbling but not brown.

  2. Gradually stir in the hot milk and hot water until free from lumps.

  3. Add the vegetable pulp, salt, and pepper, and heat until very hot but do not boil.

  4. Pour into a hot tureen and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Cooked vegetables
Provide the body, flavour and substance of the soup once sieved into a pulp.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries the flour into a smooth roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk and water into a creamy, smooth soup body.
Milk
Adds creaminess, richness and a soft, mellow sweetness to the soup.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Once the vegetable pulp is added, boiling can make milk-based soups scorch or separate and lose their smooth texture, so heat only until very hot.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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