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Soup

Potato Soup with Leek

A soup of potatoes and leeks, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and leek work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Potato Soup with Leek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes in salted water until cooked and absorb all the liquid.

  3. Mash the potatoes in a saucepan with a wooden spoon or pestle.

  4. Moisten the mashed potatoes with warm water, stock, or milk.

Add the leeks and finish

  1. Place the soup back on the fire and add the cut leeks.

  2. Boil the leeks until cooked.

  3. Season the soup with salt and pepper, then blend in a piece of fresh butter.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 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
Form the main body of the soup, thickening it when mashed.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like flavour and soft texture to the soup.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel at the end.
Warm water, stock, or milk
Loosens the mashed potato to a soupy consistency; milk or stock adds extra flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the potatoes until they absorb all the liquid. Potatoes that still hold excess water make a thin, diluted base that is hard to thicken later. Fully cooked, dry potatoes mash smoothly and give the soup body before you moisten it.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

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