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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with boiled potatoes, onion, bay leaf, celery, parsley, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes until half done; drain and cover with boiling water.

  3. Add the onion, bay leaf, celery, and parsley.

  4. Boil until the potatoes are fully cooked.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together.

  3. Stir the mixture into the milk until it thickens.

  4. Pass the potatoes through a sieve into a serving bowl.

  5. Pour the hot milk over them and stir until smooth.

  6. Serve immediately.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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
Provide the starchy body and bulk that make up most of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and adds richness and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with flour forms the roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks with the butter, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the milk. Flour clumps if added raw or too quickly. Mixing it with butter first and stirring while the milk heats lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly into a smooth soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, parsley, milk, butter, flour. 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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