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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with potatoes, onion, salt, pepper, optional salt pork, milk, egg, celery leaves, and thickened with beef fat and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the potatoes, onion, and salt in a little water until very soft.

  2. Mash the mixture.

  3. Gradually add the hot water while stirring to keep it smooth.

Thicken and finish

  1. Cook the flour in the beef fat.

  2. Add the cooked flour mixture to the soup.

  3. Fry bread dice in the beef fat.

  4. Add the fried bread dice to the soup at the last minute.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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
Starch that breaks down and thickens the soup, giving it body.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens during cooking.
Beef fat
Carries rich savory flavor and aroma through the soup and bread dice.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the cooked flour mixture to the soup. Flour clumps when it meets hot liquid unless it is stirred in gradually and evenly. Stirring while adding it spreads the starch so the soup thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, pepper, pork, milk, egg, beef. 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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