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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup with onions, leeks, celery, herbs, and fried bread, finished with egg yolks and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Potato 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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine onions, leeks, celery, and potatoes with butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the mixture for 10 minutes without coloring.

  3. Add vegetable stock, herbs, salt, and cloves to the pan.

  4. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

Puree and finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

  2. Return the puree to the pan.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes, skimming as needed.

  4. If the soup is too thick, dilute with a little milk.

  5. Stir in beaten egg yolks mixed with cream and small pieces of butter. Let the mixture melt.

  6. Add finely picked parsley and chervil.

  7. Serve with diced fried bread.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  4. Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

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

  5. Leek + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to give the soup its body and thickness.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when stirred in without boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when the vegetables are fried gently at the start.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the base.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the soup boils after they are added. Keep the soup hot but below a boil while stirring them in, so it becomes smooth and lightly thickened.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, leek, celery, potato, butter, egg, 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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