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Milk Soups , As Made At Paris

A milk soup thickened with egg yolks and served over French bread slices, optionally flavored with lemon peel, coriander seeds, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Milk Soups , As Made At Paris

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Boil the milk with salt and sugar.

  2. Place French bread slices at the bottom of a serving dish.

  3. Pour a little milk over the bread to moisten it and keep it warm without boiling.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks in the remaining milk.

  2. Heat the milk mixture, stirring continuously until it thickens, then remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. For a superior soup, boil lemon peel, coriander seeds, cinnamon, and salt in milk, then strain and mix with the egg yolks before serving over the bread.

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. Lemon + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Forms the liquid base of the soup and the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they heat, adding richness.
French bread slices
Soak up the warm milk to form the soft base of the dish.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot it can scramble or curdle. Stirring constantly and removing it from heat as soon as it thickens keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, bread, egg, coriander, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, bread, egg, coriander, cinnamon. 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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