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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with sweet milk, optional cream or butter, and optional onion or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and slice the potatoes.

  2. Cook the potatoes in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked potatoes through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Return the potato puree to the fire and add the sweet milk.

  2. Season with salt and add cream or butter if desired.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil.

  4. Mix the flour with a little water until smooth, then add to the soup.

  5. Boil for a few minutes and serve.

  6. For added flavor, simmer a slice of onion or a stalk of celery in the soup, then remove before serving.

  7. Alternatively, add crushed crackers just before serving.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Cooked and pressed into a puree, they form the body and thickness of the soup.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, giving the soup a smooth, mellow texture.
Flour
Mixed with water and stirred in, it thickens the soup as it boils.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with a little cold water before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Boiling then gelatinises the starch, which thickens the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, cream, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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