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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup with celery, seakale, leek, butter, sago, milk, cream, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Celery and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the vegetables and fry them in butter over low heat for about 10 minutes without browning.

  2. Add the milk and water, then bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture, then return it to the pot.

  4. Sprinkle in the sago when it boils again and simmer until cooked.

  5. Stir in the cream and serve.

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 + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Thickens the soup as it cooks and turns it slightly silky.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel at the end.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and adds fat for a rounded taste.
Potatoes
Break down during simmering to give the soup body and substance.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables without browning. Gentle frying over low heat softens the vegetables and builds flavour in the butter. Browning would add bitter, roasted notes that clash with the delicate soup, so keep the heat low and the colour pale.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cream, milk, leek, butter. 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.

More potato soup recipes

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