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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with potatoes, onions, butter, flour, and milk, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine potatoes, onions, boiling water, salt, and butter in a pot.

  2. Boil until the vegetables can be mashed through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub flour and butter together to form a smooth paste.

  2. Return the mashed potatoes to the pot with hot milk and the flour-butter mixture.

  3. Stir the soup until it boils.

  4. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Serve hot with small dice of toasted bread.

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 + oniontop 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

Potatoes
Break down when boiled and mashed to give the soup its body and thickness.
White onions
Soften during boiling and add sweetness and savory depth to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk and mashed vegetables into a smoother, creamier soup.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the flavor and texture of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour-butter paste into the hot soup. Flour lumps if it goes in unblended, so rubbing it smooth first and stirring until the soup boils lets the starch dissolve evenly and thicken the soup without graininess.

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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