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Parmentier Soup

A creamy potato soup with leeks, celery, stock, milk, cream, butter, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Parmentier Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Slice the potatoes and blanch them.

  2. Stew the potatoes in stock with the leeks and celery tied together, along with the crumb of the French roll.

  3. When the potatoes break under pressure, rub them through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the potato puree with enough stock, add a pinch of sugar and a little nutmeg.

  2. Return to the pot and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the milk, cream, and fresh butter.

  4. Pour into a hot tureen and serve with slices of toast.

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. Potato + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

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

  3. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + celerytop 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

Potatoes
Break down when stewed and rubbed through a sieve to form the body of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the puree.
Cream
Adds fat and body, making the soup silkier and richer.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded flavour that finishes the soup.
French roll crumb
Thickens the stew slightly, helping the soup hold body.

The step that matters

Rubbing the potatoes through a sieve. Potatoes must be fully softened before sieving, or the puree turns lumpy and uneven. Pressing them through a sieve breaks the cell walls smoothly, giving a velvety texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, leek, sugar, nutmeg, milk, cream, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, leek, sugar, nutmeg, milk, cream, butter. 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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