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Milk Soup with Vermicelli

A warm milk soup flavored with vermicelli, salt, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Milk Soup with Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 5 pints of milk to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add a small quantity of salt to the boiling milk.

  3. Gradually drop in 5 ounces of fresh vermicelli while stirring to prevent lumps.

  4. Continue stirring frequently for 15 to 20 minutes until the vermicelli is tender.

  5. For added flavor, stir in a little pounded sugar and powdered cinnamon 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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 cooks the vermicelli as it simmers.
Fresh vermicelli
Thickens the milk as its starch releases, giving the soup body and a soft texture.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk.
Powdered cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Drop in the vermicelli gradually while stirring. Adding vermicelli all at once clumps the starch on contact with hot liquid, and constant stirring keeps the strands separated so they cook evenly and the milk stays smooth.

“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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