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Cottage Soup

A creamy potato and vegetable soup seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley, served hot with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cottage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and finely chop the potatoes, carrot, and onion.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

Make the soup

  1. Add the chopped vegetables and stir for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour in half the milk and all the white stock or water, then boil gently until the carrot is soft.

  3. Pass the soup through a sieve and add enough milk to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  4. Reboil the soup, then season with salt, pepper, and stir in 2 teaspoons of chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with croutons.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during boiling to thicken the soup and give it a smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps soften the vegetables before liquid is added.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, and is added in stages to reach a thick cream consistency.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens in the butter.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour, and softens during gentle boiling.

The step that matters

Passing the soup through a sieve. Starchy potatoes must be cooked through before sieving, or the soup turns lumpy and grainy. Adding milk afterwards, rather than before, lets you control the final thickness.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, carrot, milk, parsley, 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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