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Potato Soup with Rivels

A creamy potato soup thickened with egg yolk and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Soup with Rivels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup base

  1. Cook the diced potatoes in a small amount of salted water until well done.

  2. Pour the milk (or milk and cream) over the potatoes.

  3. If using milk, add the butter and season with salt and pepper. Stir frequently until it boils.

Add the rivels

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk with enough flour to make smooth rivels.

  2. Slowly add the rivels to the boiling milk and cook for an additional 15 minutes, stirring carefully to prevent burning.

  3. If the soup gets too thick, cool it with cream.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when fully cooked to give the soup body and a thick, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, with its proteins and sugars, adds richness and gentle browning risk.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the flour dough set into tender rivels in the hot soup.
Flour
Forms the dough that becomes rivels and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the rivels to the boiling milk. Slowly adding the flour-and-yolk dough keeps the pieces separate instead of clumping. Stirring carefully matters because milk scorches and sticks to the bottom of the pot easily.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

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