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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with cold‑boiled mashed potatoes, milk, butter, pepper, salt, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. In a pot, heat the milk.

  2. Mash the cold-boiled potatoes and add them to the milk until it reaches a thick custard consistency.

  3. Stir in the butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. If desired, add chopped parsley for flavor.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + potatotop 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
Thicken the milk as they break down, giving the soup its body and creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the mashed potatoes thicken into a creamy soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the mashed potatoes to the milk. Potatoes thicken as their starch is released and absorbed into the hot milk. Adding them too quickly or letting the mixture boil hard can make it gluey or scorch the milk, so stir steadily over gentle heat until it reaches a thick custard consistency.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, potato, butter, pepper):

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

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