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Cheese Soup

A simple cheese soup made with milk, cheese, butter, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Cheese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the milk, cheese, salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Heat over medium until just scalded.

Finish and serve

  1. Quickly stir in the beaten eggs.

  2. Remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling.

  3. Serve hot as a tea relish.

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

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup its smooth, creamy body.
Cheese
Adds rich flavour and fat, and melts into the liquid to thicken the soup.
Eggs
Set gently with heat to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately after adding the eggs. Egg proteins set when heated too far, so the eggs can scramble and curdle the soup. Stirring them in quickly and taking the pot off the heat keeps the mixture smooth and 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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