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Milk Soup, the Dutch Way

A Dutch milk soup made with milk, cinnamon, sugar, bread, and egg yolks, simmered until the bread softens.

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, the Dutch Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon and sugar.

  2. Soak the bread slices in the milk.

  3. Place the soaked bread slices in a dish.

  4. Pour the hot milk over the bread.

Cook and finish

  1. Set the dish over a low heat to simmer until the bread is soft.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with a little of the milk.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the soup and mix well.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Cinnamon and sugar 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 that softens the bread and carries the sweet spiced flavor.
French bread
Absorbs the warm milk and softens into the body of the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup as they gently set with the warm milk, adding richness.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor to the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the soup. Adding beaten yolks directly to hot liquid can scramble them. Mixing them with a little warm milk first tempers the yolks, so they blend in smoothly and thicken the soup evenly.

“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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