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Soup

Milk Soup

A creamy soup of potatoes, leeks or onions, milk, butter, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and leek work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Peel the potatoes and leeks.

  2. Add the peeled potatoes and leeks to 2 quarts of boiling water and boil until tender.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve, returning the liquid and vegetables to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk, butter, and seasoning, then place the pot on the heat.

  2. Stir continuously while gradually adding the crushed tapioca.

  3. Boil for another 10 minutes, stirring to prevent lumps.

  4. 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.

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. Potato + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when cooked to give the soup body and a thick, smooth texture.
Tapioca
Starch that thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a silky body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the tapioca. Tapioca must be added gradually while stirring constantly, because dumping it in clumps the starch. Continued boiling then fully thickens the soup and cooks out any raw starch taste.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, 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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