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Windsor Milk Soup

A vegetable soup made with potatoes, turnip, parsnip, celery, leeks or onions, butter, sugar, flour or sago, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Windsor Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the potatoes, turnip, parsnip, celery, and leeks or onions in a pot, all chopped into small pieces.

  2. Add sugar and butter to the pot.

  3. Heat until hot.

  4. Pour in 2 quarts of water.

  5. Boil for 1 hour until the vegetables are soft.

  6. Strain the mixture, pressing it through with a spoon.

  7. Return the strained mixture to the pot.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 1 breakfast cup of milk.

  2. Add the flour-milk mixture to the pot.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

  4. Wash and moisten 2 tablespoons of sago.

  5. Stir until it boils.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  7. Serve.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when boiled to give the soup body and a smooth, thick texture after straining.
Leeks or onions
Build savoury flavour as they soften in the butter and water base.
Flour
Thickens the milk and strained vegetable liquid so the soup becomes creamy and lightly body-rich.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the soup's flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-milk mixture. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed. Whisking it into cold milk first and then stirring while it heats keeps the starch dispersed, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, parsnip, celery, leek, pepper, butter, sugar):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, parsnip, celery, leek, pepper, butter, sugar. 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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