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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, onion, salt, pepper, and optional salt pork, milk, or egg, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the potatoes, onion, and salt in a little water until very soft.

  2. Mash the mixture and gradually stir in the hot water to keep it smooth.

  3. In a separate pan, cook the flour in the beef fat until golden.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the soup, stirring well.

Finish and serve

  1. If using, fry the salt pork and add it to the soup just before serving.

  2. For a richer flavor, you can also add milk or a beaten egg.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 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 into starch that thickens and gives the soup its body.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in fat, giving it a smoother body.
Beef fat
Carries flavor and helps the flour cook into a smooth, golden roux.
Onion
Softens while boiling and adds savory, aromatic flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the beef fat. Flour must cook in the fat until golden to remove its raw taste and to thicken smoothly. Adding it raw or undercooked can leave lumps and a pasty flavor.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, pepper, pork, milk, egg, beef):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, pepper, pork, milk, egg, beef. 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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