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Milk Soup

A creamy soup of potatoes, carrot, turnip, onions, celery, butter, milk, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Wash the other vegetables, then peel them and wash again.

  3. Slice all the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. Put them into a saucepan with the butter and toss them well until they absorb the butter.

  2. Pour the water over the vegetables, add the salt and pepper, and boil for one hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a colander.

  2. Return the vegetables to the saucepan and mash them finely.

  3. Pour back the strained water, add the milk, and bring to a boil before serving.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter or dripping
Coats the vegetables and carries flavour, adding richness to the soup.
Potatoes
Break down when mashed, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Skim milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness to the finished soup.
Onions
Release sugars and aroma as they cook, building the base flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, milk, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, milk, pepper. 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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