Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓
Milk Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the almond milk
Boil the milk with sweet and bitter almonds and the broken cinnamon stick.
Stir in enough sugar to make it very sweet.
Strain the mixture.
Prepare the bread and custard
Toast the bread slices.
Lay the toasted bread slices in the bottom of a tureen.
Pour a little hot milk over the bread to soak.
Beat the egg yolks until very light.
Set the milk on hot coals.
Gradually add the egg yolks, stirring constantly until it thickens.
Remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling.
Assemble and serve
Pour the thickened mixture over the bread in the tureen.
Cover the bread with slices of baked apple.
Pour the milk mixture over the apple-covered bread.
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.
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Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,514 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,598 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 that carries the almond flavour and sets into the custard.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
- Sweet almonds
- Add nutty, almond flavour and body to the milk.
- Bitter almonds
- Add a stronger, more pungent almond aroma to the milk.
- Bread
- Soaks up the hot milk, giving the soup a soft, absorbent base.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness, which the recipe asks to be very strong.
The step that matters
Remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling.. Egg yolks thicken milk only up to a point. Past that, the proteins tighten and separate, so the custard turns grainy or curdled. Pulling the pan off the heat as it thickens stops this.
Swap the apple
The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, almond, cinnamon, sugar, bread, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Raisinfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, almond, cinnamon, sugar, bread, egg. 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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