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Milk Soup

A creamy potato and leek soup thickened with tapioca and flavored with butter, salt, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and leek work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water in a large saucepan.

  2. Wash, scrub, peel, and quarter the potatoes.

  3. Trim the green tops from the leeks, wash them, and chop.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the vegetables, and sweat for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the vegetables and add salt and pepper.

  3. Boil until the vegetables are soft enough to mash.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander or wire sieve.

  5. Rub the vegetables through the colander with a wooden spoon.

  6. Return the pulp and soup to the saucepan, add the milk, and bring to a boil.

  7. Gradually sprinkle in the tapioca while stirring continuously.

  8. Let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  9. Serve the soup in a hot tureen.

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. Potato + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and pureed, giving the soup its body and thickness.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the finished soup.
Tapioca
Starch that thickens the liquid as it boils, giving a smoother body.
Butter
Fat that softens the leeks or onions and adds rich flavour.
Leeks or onions
Sweat in butter to build a mild, savoury aromatic base.

The step that matters

Gradually sprinkle in the tapioca while stirring continuously. Tapioca starch clumps if dumped in at once. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the granules separate so they hydrate and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

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