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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, sweet milk, onion, celery, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until soft.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the onion, celery, and parsley in the sweet milk.

  3. Drain and mash the cooked potatoes.

Make the soup

  1. Pour the boiling milk mixture over the mashed potatoes, stirring quickly.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine strainer, pressing as much potato through as possible.

  3. Return the strained soup to the stove and bring to a boil.

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

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starch and body that thicken the soup and give it a smooth, hearty texture.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, and carries the flavour of the simmered aromatics.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling milk into the mashed potatoes. Adding the hot liquid while stirring quickly spreads the potato starch evenly through the milk. This helps prevent lumps and keeps the soup smooth before it is strained.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, onion, celery, butter, flour. 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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