Skip to main content
Main

Milk Soup

A potato and onion soup thickened with butter, flour, and sweet milk, served with toasted stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil potatoes and onion in water until tender.

  2. Pass through a colander.

  3. In a kettle, brown butter and flour.

  4. Add the soup back to the kettle, stirring slowly.

  5. Bring to a boil, then add sweet milk.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Butter stale bread, cut into squares, and brown in the oven.

  2. Serve with 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.

  1. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 and pureed, giving the soup body and a thick texture.
Butter
Browns with the flour to add a nutty, toasty flavour and richness.
Flour
Browned with the butter and stirred in, it thickens the soup and adds structure.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess, mild sweetness and a smooth, rich body to the soup.

The step that matters

Brown the butter and flour. Cooking the flour in butter until golden toasts it and removes raw starch taste. Stirring slowly keeps lumps from forming when the strained soup is returned to the kettle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More milk soup recipes

Tomato 14Rice 10Bread 8Oyster 6Almond 5Beef 4 See all 78 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes