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Lunch Soup

A creamy soup of onion, potato, broth, milk, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Lunch Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onion and fry it in the butter until light brown.

  2. Dissolve the flour in the cold broth and stir it into the onion.

  3. Boil the milk and beat in the mashed potato.

  4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Pour the mixture over the onion broth in a tureen and add the broken slice of bread.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Fried in butter until light brown, it builds the soup's sweet, savory base flavor.
Potato
Mashed into the hot milk, it adds body and a thick, creamy texture.
Flour
Dissolved in cold broth, it thickens the soup as it combines with the liquid.
Milk
Boiled and beaten with the potato, it forms the creamy liquid that makes up most of the soup.
Bread
Added to the tureen, it soaks up liquid and adds body to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the cold broth. Flour dissolved in cold liquid stays smooth; adding it to hot liquid without first dispersing it can form lumps, while starch that is properly dispersed thickens the soup evenly as it heats.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, milk, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, milk, pepper, bread. 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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