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Potato Soup

A creamy soup of stewed potatoes, leeks, celery, and stock, finished with milk, cream, butter, and garnished with chervil and fried crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Leek and celery 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

Prepare the soup

  1. Slice the potatoes and blanch them.

  2. Stew the potatoes in stock with leeks, celery, and the crumb of a French roll.

  3. When the potatoes break under pressure, remove the herbs and rub the potatoes through a tammy.

  4. Mix with enough stock to clarify the mixture, then add sugar and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, mix in the milk, cream, and butter.

  2. Pour the soup into a tureen and garnish with blanched chervil and fried crusts.

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. Leek + celerytop 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. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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
Break down when stewed to give the soup its body and thick texture.
French roll crumb
Adds starch that helps thicken the soup.
Double cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Thins the soup and adds creaminess and a mild dairy flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, smooth flavour.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and savoury flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Rub the potatoes through a tammy. Pressing the fully softened potatoes through a fine sieve breaks down the remaining fibres and yields a smooth texture. Potatoes that are not cooked through will leave lumps and a grainy texture.

Swap the celery

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

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

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

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