Skip to main content
Main

Flour Soup

A thickened soup made with beef fat, flour, onions, water, milk, and mashed potato, seasoned with 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. Heat the beef fat in a pot until hot.

  2. Add the sliced onions and cook until light brown, then remove and press out the fat.

  3. In the same fat, cook the flour until it turns yellow.

  4. Gradually add the water to the flour mixture, stirring continuously.

  5. Return the onions to the pot and let it sit for a while.

  6. Add the milk and mashed potato, then season with salt and 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. 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 water into a smooth, body-giving soup.
Beef fat
Carries the cooking of the onions and flour, adding rich savory flavor.
Onions
Browned in the fat, they add sweetness and savory depth to the broth.
Mashed potato
Dissolves into the liquid, adding body and a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Flour must be stirred and cooked until it turns yellow before water is added. This cooks out raw starch taste and helps the flour blend smoothly without lumps.

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