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Cheese Soup

A cheese soup made with milk, pepper, salt, eggs, and boiled rice or spaghetti.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large saucepan, melt the cheese with a little hot milk.

  2. Once melted, slowly add 1 quart of hot milk while stirring constantly; do not let it boil.

  3. Gradually stir in the well-beaten eggs to prevent curdling.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the seasoning and 1 cup of boiled rice or spaghetti, ensuring the mixture does not boil.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Cheese + ricetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the milk to give the soup its main flavor and body.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base that the melted cheese and eggs blend into.
Eggs
Set gently with heat to thicken the soup slightly when stirred in slowly.
Boiled rice or spaghetti
Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs in gradually. Adding beaten eggs slowly while stirring spreads the heat evenly, so the proteins set smoothly instead of curdling into lumps. Keeping the mixture below a boil also prevents curdling and keeps the texture silky.

“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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