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Potato Soup

A simple soup made from mashed potatoes, butter, milk or cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them very fine.

  2. Add the boiling water, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the butter and let the mixture boil.

  4. Add the milk or cream and a little parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starchy body that thickens the soup as they break down when mashed fine.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour, rounding out the soup.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil after adding the butter. Once the potatoes are mashed and the butter is stirred in, the soup is thickened by starch. Boiling it fully cooks the starch and blends the fat in, so the soup is hot and evenly textured before the dairy goes in.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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