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Soup

Milk Soup

A creamy potato and leek soup thickened with tapioca and finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 vegetables

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water in a large saucepan.

  2. Wash, peel, and quarter the potatoes.

  3. Wash the leeks (or onions) and chop them, removing the green tops.

  4. Add the potatoes and leeks to the boiling water.

  5. Stir in the butter, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

  6. Boil until the vegetables are soft and mashable.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a colander.

  2. Rub the vegetables through the colander with a wooden spoon.

  3. Return the pulp and soup to the saucepan and add 1 pint of milk.

  4. Bring to a boil again and gradually stir in the tapioca.

  5. Let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  6. Serve the soup in a hot tureen.

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. Butter + milktop 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 into a soft pulp that gives the soup its body.
Leeks or onions
Add savory flavor and aroma as they soften in the boiling water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup base.
Tapioca
Thickens the soup as its starch swells during gentle boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the tapioca. Tapioca must be added gradually to the boiling milk mixture so it disperses evenly. Dumped in at once, it clumps, and the starch cannot hydrate and thicken evenly.

Swap the leek

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

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

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