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Plain White Soup

A simple soup of potatoes, onions, turnip, sweet milk, butter, and flour, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Plain White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the vegetables in the water until soft.

  2. Pour through a colander and return to the pot.

Thicken and season

  1. Mix the flour and butter with the milk, then add to the soup.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil for 5 to 10 minutes.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 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
Their starch softens and adds body to the broth as they cook.
Onions
Cooking softens them and adds sweetness and savory aroma to the soup.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the soup.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the soup a richer, smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and dairy richness to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the flour, butter and milk mixture. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Blending it fully with the milk and butter first lets the starch disperse evenly. Boiling then swells the starch granules and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, milk, butter, flour, 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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