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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup with butter, onion, milk, sago, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and wash the potatoes, then boil until cooked.

  2. Slice the onion and fry it in butter without letting it brown.

  3. Add a little water or stock to the onion and boil until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the potatoes and onion through a wire sieve into a pot.

  2. Add the boiled milk and bay leaf, then return to the heat and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the sago, thyme, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper, and boil until clear.

  4. Serve very hot.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during sieving to give the soup its body and thick, smooth texture.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion gently and carries flavour into the soup.
Sago
Starch that thickens the liquid as it boils until it turns clear.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, rounding out the soup's flavour and body.

The step that matters

Frying the onion without browning. Browning adds bitter, caramelised notes that change the soup's clean, pale flavour. Gentle frying softens the onion and releases its sweetness without colour.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, thyme, milk, parsley, 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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