Skip to main content
Main

Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with potatoes, celery, onion, butter, flour, milk, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the potatoes and place them in a pot with the celery and onion.

  2. Cover with boiling water and cook over high heat for 30 minutes.

  3. After 30 minutes, drain the vegetables, saving the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Reserve ½ cup of cold milk and heat the remaining milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the flour with the cold milk and stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Mash the vegetables until smooth, then gradually mix in the reserved cooking water.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pot.

  5. Add salt and pepper, then whisk for 3 minutes.

  6. Gradually stir in the boiling milk, then add the butter and herbs.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + cherviltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + cherviltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together278 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when mashed to give the soup its body and thickness.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds richness and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Celery
Adds moisture and a mild vegetable flavor as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Blending it with cold milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of turning lumpy.

Swap the chervil

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, onion, butter, flour, pepper, milk. 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 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes