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Scotch Potato Soup

A creamy soup of leeks or onions, celery, milk, potatoes, butter, flour, salt, cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the leeks or onions.

  2. Mix with celery and cook in 2 tablespoons of butter for 6 minutes, tossing constantly.

  3. Add the mixture to the scalded milk and cook for 45 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water for 10 minutes, then drain.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, add 2 tablespoons of flour, and stir to form a smooth paste.

  3. Dilute the paste with some of the milk taken from the vegetables.

  4. Combine the diluted paste with the milk and vegetables, then add the potatoes.

  5. Cover and cook until the potatoes are tender.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and a few grains of cayenne.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leeks or onions
Provide the aromatic base and sweetness as they soften in butter and milk.
Potatoes
Add body and substance, becoming tender in the simmering soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavours of the vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with butter into a smooth paste.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when cooking the vegetables and making the roux.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter paste. Stirring the flour and butter into a smooth paste before adding liquid prevents lumps. Diluting it gradually with warm milk lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, milk, potato, butter, flour, 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.

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