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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with mashed Irish potatoes, onions, celery, parsley, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil enough Irish potatoes to make 3 cups when mashed.

  2. Whip the mashed potatoes light and keep hot.

Make the soup

  1. Add shredded onion, chopped celery, and chopped parsley to 2 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Cook until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Strain the vegetables through a colander, reserving the cooking water.

  4. Pass the mashed potatoes through the colander into the same pot with the reserved water.

  5. Return to heat.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Add the butter mixed with flour.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

Irish potatoes
Provide the starchy body that thickens the soup as they are mashed and passed through.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed with butter and stirred into the hot liquid.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the cooking water.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the cooking water.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if dropped in raw; mixing it with butter first and returning the soup to heat lets the starch hydrate and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, parsley, pepper, butter, 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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