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Soup

Milk Vegetable Soups

A creamy soup made with milk, cooked vegetables, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Milk Vegetable Soups

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter or margarine in a pot.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the cold milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the cooked vegetables and heat over medium until thickened.

  5. If the soup is too thick, add a little water or milk.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 the flour thickens into a creamy soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body.
Butter or margarine
Fat that coats the flour and adds richness and flavor.
Cooked vegetables
Provide the main substance and flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cold milk, stirring constantly. Adding cold milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed in the fat, so lumps do not form. Constant stirring lets the starch hydrate evenly as the mixture heats and thickens.

“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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