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Onion and Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, onions, butter, parsley, and egg yolks, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Onion and Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the potatoes and onion in the butter until slightly colored.

  2. Add them to the boiling water along with the parsley.

  3. Boil until the potatoes are soft, then press through a colander.

  4. Return the puree to the fire and simmer for 2-3 minutes.

Finish with egg

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl. Add a little soup to the beaten yolks, stirring constantly.

  2. Slowly add the egg mixture to the soup, stirring gently.

  3. Season with plenty of pepper and salt, but do not let the soup boil after adding the eggs.

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down into a smooth puree that gives the soup its body.
Onion
Frying until lightly colored adds sweetness and savory depth to the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries the flavor of the frying onion and potatoes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a creamy, smooth texture when gently heated.

The step that matters

Do not let the soup boil after adding the eggs. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; boiling can curdle them and leave the soup grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, parsley, egg, 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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