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Potato Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with potatoes, onions, veal stock, milk, ground rice, and cream, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Potato Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then slice them.

  2. Peel and slice the onion.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan, then add the potatoes and onion, frying gently without browning.

  2. Add the veal stock and milk, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.

  3. Stir in the ground rice and cook gently until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve back into the stew-pan.

  5. Add the cream and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then reheat without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve with small croutons of 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.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the body, which thickens the soup when puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the vegetables fry gently.
Ground rice
Thickens the soup slightly and gives it a smoother, fuller texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Veal stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that gives the soup its depth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup base.

The step that matters

Reheat without boiling. Once cream is added, boiling can cause it to separate or curdle and leave the soup grainy. Gentle heat keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, veal, rice, cream, 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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