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Fruit and Vegetable Soups

A creamy soup of onions, celery, and potatoes simmered with butter, water, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Fruit and Vegetable Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Chop the onions, celery, and potatoes.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the chopped vegetables with butter and water.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Add stock to the stewpan.

  5. Boil gently until the potatoes are done, about 1 hour.

Finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Stir in the boiled cream, but do not let it boil again.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during long cooking to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, mellow flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Stock
Provides the main liquid and savory flavor base for the soup.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet during simmering, building the soup's aroma.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, aromatic vegetable flavor as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream without reboiling. Cream can curdle or separate when it gets too hot, and prolonged boiling can make it grainy. Adding it off the boil and keeping the soup just warm keeps it smooth and evenly blended.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, 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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