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Potato and Leek Soup

A soup made from potatoes, leeks, water, skim milk, butter, tapioca, 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: Potato and leek work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Potato and Leek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and trim the leeks.

  2. Cut the potatoes and leeks into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Bring 3 pints of water to a boil in a clean saucepan and add the potatoes and leeks.

  2. Cook until the vegetables are soft enough to pulp.

  3. Rub the vegetables through a fine wire sieve.

  4. Return the puree and water to the saucepan.

  5. Add ½ pint of skim milk and 2 ounces of sweet butter.

  6. When just boiling, gradually stir in 2 ounces of crushed tapioca.

  7. Stir and boil for 10 minutes.

  8. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

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. Potato + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like flavour and, when pulped, help thicken and sweeten the soup.
Crushed tapioca
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy soup as it boils.
Sweet butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel and flavour.
Skim milk
Adds liquid and a mild dairy flavour while keeping the soup light.

The step that matters

Stir in the tapioca gradually. Tapioca starch clumps if dumped in at once. Adding it slowly to just-boiling liquid, while stirring, lets each granule disperse before it swells and thickens.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, 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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