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Milk Soup

Milk Soup is a thick rice-based dish with eggs, butter, and sugar, baked into balls and served in a sweet milk broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Milk Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in water overnight, then strain it.

  2. Boil the rice with milk until it becomes very stiff, then let it cool.

Form and bake the balls

  1. Mix in the eggs, butter, and sugar.

  2. Form the mixture into balls the size of egg yolks.

  3. Bake the balls in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until they are a fine yellow color.

Make the soup and serve

  1. In a separate pot, boil the milk with some sugar and the yolks of the eggs to prepare the soup.

  2. Place the baked balls in a tureen and pour the soup over them.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the firm body of the balls when boiled with milk and cooled.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to a thick base and forms the liquid of the soup.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, as yolks, enrich and thicken the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the rice mixture, softening its texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to both the balls and the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the rice with milk until very stiff. Rice starch thickens as it absorbs milk and cooks. Stopping too early leaves the mixture too loose to shape into balls, while overcooking can make it gluey and dry once baked.

“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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