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Potato Puree

A creamy soup made from mashed potatoes, onion, celery, butter, flour, milk, eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Puree

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine potatoes, onion, and celery in boiling water.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and cook gently for 30 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Strain and rub through a colander back into the kettle.

  4. Add parsley and floured butter, stirring to a simmering boil.

Finish with eggs and milk

  1. Heat milk in another vessel, beat in eggs, and mix well.

  2. Add milk mixture to the soup kettle and stir over heat for 1 minute.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide body and starch that thicken the soup when rubbed through a colander.
Butter
Enriches the soup and carries flour to thicken it smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter.
Eggs
Enrich the soup and add body when beaten into hot milk and stirred over heat.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the soup base.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and milk mixture. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the milk is too hot or stirred poorly they can scramble into curds. Mixing them into hot milk first and then adding it gently to the soup helps keep the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, egg, celery, milk, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, egg, celery, milk, parsley. 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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