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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup with turnips, carrots, and cayenne pepper, finished with a beaten cream and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes in water until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes very fine with the butter.

  3. Add enough boiling milk to achieve the right consistency.

Add the vegetables

  1. In a small amount of water, boil the diced turnips and carrots until tender.

  2. Combine the vegetables with the soup, adding cayenne and salt to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, beat the cream with the egg yolk.

  2. Remove the soup from the heat and stir in the cream mixture.

  3. Serve immediately with fried croutons.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starch that mashes into the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mashed potato base.
Milk
Adds liquid to loosen the mash to the desired consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when stirred in off the heat.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream mixture and gives the soup a richer body.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream and egg yolk into the soup off the heat. Egg yolk thickens when heated and can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot or kept boiling. Removing the pot from the heat first and adding the mixture just before serving keeps the soup smooth and thick.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, milk, carrot, pepper, cream, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, carrot, pepper, cream, egg. 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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