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Milk or Cream Soup

A simple soup made from milk or cream thickened with butter and flour or corn starch, served with toasted bread or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk or Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk or cream in a kettle.

  2. Add the sweet butter and stir until melted.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour or corn starch with a little cold milk to form a paste.

  4. Add the paste to the kettle and stir until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot soup over diced toasted bread or crackers.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup its body and richness.
Sweet butter
Adds fat for a smooth mouthfeel and rounded flavor.
Flour or corn starch
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated.
Toasted bread or crackers
Soaks up the hot soup and adds crisp, chewy texture.

The step that matters

Add the paste and stir until thickened. Starch must be fully mixed into the liquid before it heats. Mixing it first with cold milk prevents lumps, and stirring keeps the starch dispersed as it swells and thickens the soup.

“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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