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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with potatoes, rice, butter, flour, and sweet cream, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

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

Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped potatoes and water.

  2. Add the rice and bring to a boil until the rice is tender.

  3. Stir in the butter until melted.

  4. Mix the flour with a little water to form a paste, then stir it into the soup.

  5. Add the sweet cream just before removing from heat.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down as they cook to give the soup body and a thick, creamy texture.
Rice
Softens as it cooks and adds starch that thickens the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Forms a paste that thickens the broth and helps it hold together.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Add the sweet cream just before removing from heat. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils for long or is heated hard, so it should go in at the end and the soup kept below a rolling boil.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, butter, flour, cream, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, butter, flour, cream, pepper. 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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