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Soup

Miik and Cheese Soup

A simple soup made by thickening milk with flour, adding cheese, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cheese and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Miik and Cheese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thicken the milk with the flour in a double boiler, stirring frequently.

  2. Once thickened, add the grated cheese and season with salt and paprika.

  3. 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cheese + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,860 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 smooth soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich base as it heats.
Grated cheese
Melts into the hot base, adding richness, flavour and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cheese. Cheese is best stirred in off the heat or over very low heat once the base is thickened. High heat can make cheese separate, turn grainy or become stringy, so the soup loses its smooth texture.

“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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