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Brown Potato Sour

A potato soup made with browned potatoes, onions, milk, eggs, and butter, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Brown Potato Sour

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes carefully and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Heat the drippings in a round-bottom saucepan and fry the potatoes and onion until golden brown.

  3. Drain the potatoes and onion, then add them to the boiling water and cook until soft.

Make the soup

  1. Press the mixture through a colander back into the kettle with the cooking water.

  2. Add the parsley, stir to a boil, and season with pepper and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. In another saucepan, heat the milk and melt the butter in it.

  2. Add the beaten eggs to the milk and butter, stirring for one minute.

  3. Remove the soup kettle from the heat and pour in the milk and egg mixture.

  4. Serve immediately.

  5. If the soup does not thicken, roll 1 tablespoon of butter into flour and stir it into the soup kettle.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down when pressed.
Eggs
Enrich the soup and add body as they set gently in the hot liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and milk mixture. Eggs set when heated, so they can curdle or turn grainy if the soup is too hot. Removing the kettle from the heat before pouring in the milk and egg mixture helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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