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Milk Soup

A simple milk-based soup thickened with butter, flour, and egg, served with crackers or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock until hot.

  2. In a bowl, mix butter and flour, adding a little milk to make a smooth paste.

  3. Thicken the broth with the paste, boiling for 15 to 20 minutes, then season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg with a little milk or water, then stir it into the soup after removing it from the heat.

  2. Serve with crackers or pour over squares of 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. 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and a creamy body to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the flour blend into a smooth paste.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated, thickening the liquid into a smooth soup.
Egg
Beaten egg stirred in off the heat adds richness and slight thickening.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when hot and can curdle into strands if the soup is boiling. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring in the beaten egg keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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