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Potato Soup

A simple soup made with potatoes, pork, onion, water, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Soup

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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 3 pints of water to a boil in a pot.

  2. Add a small piece of pork and a sliced onion; boil for a few minutes.

  3. Peel and mash 6 medium-sized potatoes, then stir them smoothly into the boiling water.

  4. Add coarse sea salt to taste and 1 pint of milk.

  5. Let the mixture scald and then serve hot, optionally with broken crackers on top.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed into the broth, they thicken the soup and give it body.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the flavour of the broth.
Pork
Flavours the boiling water with savoury meat richness.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Let the mixture scald. Once the milk is added, the soup should be heated just to scalding rather than kept at a hard boil, because strong boiling can cause milk to curdle or scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, milk. 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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