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Cream of Potato Soup

A thick potato soup made with stock, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cream of Potato Soup

Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Cream of Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the potatoes in boiling water for 5 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the blanched potatoes, coarse sea salt, white pepper, and butter with the soup stock.

  2. Bring the mixture to a slow boil and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the flour paste and cook for an additional 3 minutes.

Can and process

  1. Fill into cans, exhaust for 3 minutes, and process for 35 minutes at 235°F (113°C).

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. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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
Provide the bulk of the soup and body as they soften and break down during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and carries flavor through the soup.
Wheat flour
Thickens the soup as its starch gelatinizes when cooked in the hot liquid.
Soup stock
Serves as the cooking liquid that carries the flavor of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste. Flour must be cooked long enough after it goes in to lose its raw taste and fully thicken the soup. Stir it in well to avoid lumps, since dry flour clumps when it hits hot liquid.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, wheat, 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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