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Soup

Flemish Soup

A soup made with onions, celery, potatoes, butter, water, stock, and cream, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Flemish Soup

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Flemish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter with the water over low heat for 1 hour.

  2. Add stock to fill the stewpan and boil for another hour until the potatoes are dissolved.

Strain and serve

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Boil the cream before adding it to the soup.

  3. Keep the soup hot in a small pot.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
As they break down, their starch thickens the soup and gives it body.
Onions
They soften and sweeten, forming a mild, savory base for the soup.
Celery
It adds aromatic, savory flavor to the soup base as it cooks.
Butter
It adds richness and carries flavor from the vegetables through the soup.
Cream
It adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil the cream before adding it to the soup. Hot cream blends in smoothly and keeps the soup at an even temperature. Cold cream can cool the soup and is harder to mix in evenly, which can leave the texture uneven.

Swap the celery

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

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

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