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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, milk, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaf, butter, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Parsley and celery 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

Cook the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 quart of cold water.

  2. When the potatoes are half done, drain the water.

  3. Cover the potatoes with 1 pint of fresh boiling water.

  4. Add the onion, bay leaf, parsley, and celery, and boil until the potatoes are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the milk while the potatoes finish cooking.

  2. Press the cooked potatoes through a sieve.

  3. Add the butter, salt, and pepper to the potatoes.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the potatoes. Mix well and 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. Parsley + celerytop 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

Potatoes
Form the body of the soup; pressing them through a sieve makes it smooth and thick.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness, and dilutes the potato starch into a softer texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smoother mouthfeel and rounder flavor.

The step that matters

Pressing the potatoes through a sieve. Pressing cooked potatoes while they are hot breaks cells smoothly without overworking them. Overworking releases excess starch, which can make the soup gluey.

Swap the onion

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

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

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