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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, butter, milk, and seasonings, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the potatoes until soft, then mash them.

  2. In a large pot, combine the mashed potatoes with the butter.

  3. Pour in the boiling milk while stirring continuously until it boils again.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and mace.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup into a tureen and serve with squares of fried 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, and its proteins help make the soup smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling milk while stirring continuously. Stirring keeps the mashed potato evenly dispersed in the hot milk so it blends smoothly instead of clumping or scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, 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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