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Potato Soup with Dumplings

A creamy potato soup containing small dumplings made from flour, baking powder, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Soup with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Pare, wash, and dice the potatoes.

  2. Chop the onion finely.

  3. Place the potatoes and onion in a kettle, cover with water, and add salt to taste.

  4. Cook until tender.

  5. Add the cream or milk, butter, and pepper.

  6. Bring to a boil.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, pinch of salt, baking powder, cream, and enough water to make a soft dough. Do not knead.

  2. Mould the dough into small lumps, the size of walnuts.

  3. Drop the dumplings into the soup as soon as it comes to a boil.

  4. Cover the kettle and cook for about 8 minutes without lifting the lid.

  5. Lift the kettle from the stove every 3-4 minutes to prevent boiling over or burning.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Break down when cooked to thicken the soup and give it body.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded flavor to the soup.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings, setting them as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Do not knead the dumpling dough. Kneading develops gluten in the flour, making dumplings tough and dense instead of light and tender. Mix only until the dough just comes together.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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