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Potato Soup

A soup made with potatoes, rice, butter, flour, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, bring 1 gallon of water to a boil.

  2. Work the butter and flour together in a bowl until smooth.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the chopped potatoes and rice to the boiling water.

  2. Cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the sweet cream.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Release starch into the broth, thickening it and giving it body.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, helping thicken the soup and soften its texture.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid when worked with butter into a paste.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sweet cream just before serving. Cream is added at the end so it is not boiled for long. Prolonged high heat can cause dairy to separate or taste cooked, so keeping it off the boil preserves a smooth, fresh texture.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, rice, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, rice, cream. 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.

More potato soup recipes

Irish 12Sweet 9Cream 8Creamy 8Swiss 6Scotch 5 See all 473 →

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