Skip to main content
Main

Flour Soup

A soup made with beef fat, flour, onions, water, milk, mashed potato, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Flour Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onions in the beef fat until light brown, then remove and press out the fat.

  2. In the same fat, cook the flour until it turns yellow, then gradually add the water.

  3. Return the onions to the pot and let it stand for a while.

  4. Add the milk and mashed potato, then season with salt and pepper.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  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

Flour
Cooked in the fat until yellow, it thickens the liquid into a smooth base.
Beef fat
Carries the frying of the onions and the flour, adding richness and savory flavor.
Onions
Browned in the fat, they add sweetness and savory depth to the soup.
Mashed potato
Adds body and creaminess to the soup as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and turn yellow before water is added. Adding liquid too soon leaves lumps and a pasty flavor, because starch needs heat and stirring to disperse evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, milk, potato, 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.

More flour soup recipes

Rice 20Rice Thickener 8 See all 4 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes