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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, salt pork, celery, milk or cream, butter, parsley, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the potatoes with the salt pork and celery until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add milk or cream and butter to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley and let it boil for 5 minutes.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Cut the dry bread into small dice and fry in hot lard until brown.

  2. Drain the fried bread and place it in the bottom of a soup tureen.

  3. Pour the soup over the fried bread.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when boiled and pureed to give the soup its body and thickness.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and smoothness, thinning the puree to a creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a silkier mouthfeel in the finished soup.
Dry bread
Fried in lard until brown, it gives a crisp, toasty contrast to the smooth soup.
Salt pork
Renders savoury fat and seasoning into the cooking water that flavours the potatoes.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until brown. Bread fries quickly once the surface is hot. Too little heat leaves it greasy and soft, while too much browns the outside before the inside crisps, so it should be fried in hot lard and drained well before it meets the soup.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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