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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with sliced potatoes, butter, flour, milk, cream, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Soup

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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Boil the sliced potatoes in water until tender.

  2. Pass the potatoes through a colander.

Make the roux and combine

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk, salt, and white pepper to the flour mixture.

  3. Stir in the potato mixture and heat through.

Finish and serve

  1. Finally, add the cream and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that thicken the soup and give it body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth, stable base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavor through the roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the soup its creamy texture.
Rich cream
Adds fat and smoothness to finish the soup's mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the melted butter until smooth. Flour clumps if added to hot fat without thorough stirring, and lumps stay in the soup. Stirring until smooth lets the starch disperse evenly so it thickens the milk without graininess.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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