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Milk Soup

A simple soup made with water, potatoes, leeks or onions, butter, pepper, salt, milk, and wholemeal flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the soup

  1. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

  2. Peel and add 2-3 potatoes, the whites of 2 leeks or 2 onions, 1 tablespoon of butter, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander, crushing the vegetables with a wooden spoon.

  5. Return the soup to the pot.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix 1 pint of milk with ½ cup of fine whole meal.

  2. Stir the mixture into the soup and keep stirring until it boils to prevent lumps.

  3. Serve hot.

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 during boiling and crushing to give the soup body and a thick, smooth texture.
Leeks or onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the broth as they cook.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, mellowing the soup's flavour.
Fine whole meal
Starch that thickens the milk and soup as it heats and boils.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the soup. Whole meal mixed with milk can clump when added to hot liquid. Stirring constantly while it comes to a boil disperses the starch evenly, so the starch thickens the soup smoothly instead of forming lumps.

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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