Name: White Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts of stock from a fowl; ½ cup of milk; crumbs of a roll; 2 or 3 hard boiled egg yolks; coarse sea salt to taste; meat of the fowl (optional)

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the crumbs of a roll in the milk, then add to the stock.
Beat the yolks of the hard boiled eggs with a little salt in a mortar, then add to the soup.
If desired, beat the meat of the fowl in a mortar and add it to the soup.

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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,703 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Stock from a fowl: Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries all the flavor.
Milk: Softens the roll crumbs and adds richness and body to the soup.
Roll crumbs: Thickens the soup slightly as the crumbs absorb liquid and soften.
Hard boiled egg yolks: Enrich the soup and give it a smooth, creamy texture when beaten fine.

“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.