Skip to main content
Main

Potato Soup

A simple soup of boiled potatoes and onion, seasoned with salt and cream, served with toasted bread bits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Soup

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the potatoes and onion into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Cook them in the beef stock or water until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a puree sieve.

  3. Add salt and hot cream, then beat lightly.

Serve

  1. Serve with bits of zwieback or dry toasted bread in the soup plate.

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

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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
Break down when cooked and rubbed through a sieve, giving the soup its thick, smooth body.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor as it softens in the cooking liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavor and giving a silky texture.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a puree sieve. Starch from cooked potatoes thickens the liquid, and pressing it through a sieve breaks the pieces into fine particles for a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves lumps and a grainy soup.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, beef, cream, bread):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, cream, bread. 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.

More potato soup recipes

Irish 12Sweet 9Cream 8Creamy 8Swiss 6Scotch 5 See all 473 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes