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Potato and Milk Soup

A creamy potato soup thickened with tapioca and flavored with butter, stock, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato and Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes.

  2. Wash and clean the celery and leek; peel the onion, then cut all into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter or dripping and add the vegetables; steam for a few minutes.

  2. Pour in the boiling stock or water, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg; bring to a boil.

  3. Let it simmer until the vegetables are done.

  4. Pass the mixture through a colander and return it to the stewpan.

  5. Add the milk and crushed tapioca; stir well.

  6. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes, adding more stock or water if too thick.

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

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

  2. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to give the soup body and a thick, smooth texture.
Butter or dripping
Fat that softens the vegetables gently and carries flavour into the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, rounding out the savoury stock.
Crushed tapioca
Starch that thickens the soup as it simmers with the milk.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and tapioca, then simmering. Tapioca thickens only as its starch heats and swells, and milk can scorch or curdle if it boils hard. Keep the heat gentle and stir well so the soup thickens smoothly without sticking to the base of the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, leek, onion, butter, pepper, milk. 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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