Skip to main content
Main

Quick Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, butter, onion, flour, milk, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Quick Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mash the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the chopped onion until soft.

  3. Add the flour to the pan and cook for a minute.

Make the soup

  1. Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  2. Combine the milk mixture with the mashed potatoes and pass through a colander.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and stir until heated through.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then serve garnished with parsley.

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.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 into a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the frying onion.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce-like base when cooked briefly with fat.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the soup and, once thickened, gives it a creamy body.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the flour. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, milk, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, milk, pepper, parsley. 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.

More potato soup recipes

Irish 12Sweet 9Cream 8Creamy 8Swiss 6Scotch 5 See all 473 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes