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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup with salt pork, celery, milk or cream, butter, parsley, and fried bread topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the potatoes with the salt pork and celery until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add milk or cream and butter to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley and let it boil for 5 minutes.

  5. If desired, chop the onions and boil them with the soup.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Fry the diced dry bread in hot lard until brown, then drain.

  2. Place the fried bread in the bottom of a soup tureen and pour the soup over it.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when boiled and pureed, giving the soup its body and thickness.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the puree into a smooth, creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the creamy base.
Dry bread
Fried until brown, it becomes crisp and adds a contrasting crunch beneath the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the dry bread until brown. Bread can easily burn in hot lard, which turns it bitter. Frying until golden and draining well keeps the croutons crisp rather than greasy or soggy once the soup is poured over them.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pork, celery, milk, butter, parsley, bread):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pork, celery, milk, butter, parsley, 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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