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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with butter, flour, onion, and optional egg yolks.

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

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the flour and chopped onion, cooking for a few minutes.

  4. Add the mashed potatoes to the roux.

  5. Pass the mixture through a strainer.

  6. Return the strained mixture to the heat for a few minutes to warm it up.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. If the soup is too thick, add a little more milk or hot water.

  3. For a richer soup, stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs just before serving.

  4. Serve in a tureen, garnished with chopped parsley and croutons.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the soup, thickening it as they are mashed and strained.
Butter
Enriches the flavor and forms the fat base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a smoother, creamier texture when stirred in before serving.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook briefly. Cooking the flour in melted butter for a few minutes toasts away raw starch taste and helps it thicken evenly. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavor, and lumps can form if the flour is not fully combined with the fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, milk, egg. 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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