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Puree of Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made by mashing boiled potatoes and adding flour, butter, and optional gravy and onion.

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

Puree of Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the potatoes in water until well done.

  2. Strain and mash the potatoes until smooth.

  3. Return the mashed potatoes to the pot with cold water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Thicken and season

  1. In a separate pan, brown the flour in butter.

  2. Add the browned flour mixture to the boiling potatoes.

  3. Stir in the gravy from roast or chicken.

  4. Add onion if desired.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

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

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

  2. Potato + chickentop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down into a starchy, smooth body that gives the soup its main substance.
Flour
Browned in butter and stirred in, it thickens the liquid and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Butter
Carries the flour as it browns, adding richness and a fat-based toasted flavor.
Gravy from roast or chicken
Adds savory, meaty depth and extra body to the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred over moderate heat until it turns golden and smells nutty. Undercooked flour tastes raw and pasty, while over-browned flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, butter, chicken, 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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