Name: Quick Potato Soup
Ingredients: 1 cup half-inch cubes of potato; 1½ cups water; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 small onion

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 ↓

Quick Potato Soup

Ingredients

1 cup half-inch cubes of potato
1½ cups water
¼ teaspoon salt
1 small onion

Directions

In a pot, combine the potato cubes, water, and salt.
Boil until the potatoes are tender.
Meanwhile, fry the chopped onion in a separate pan until golden.
Add the fried onion to the soup 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.

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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes (in the method): Starch that softens and thickens the broth as it cooks.
Onion: Frying until golden browns its sugars, adding sweetness and savoury aroma.

“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.