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Potato Soup

A hearty soup made with beef stock, sliced onions, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil the shank of beef for two days.

  2. Strain the beef into a crock and let it stand.

  3. Remove the fat that rises to the top before making the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the beef fat in a soup pot.

  2. Fry the sliced onions until brown.

  3. Add half of the beef stock to the pot.

  4. Stir in the mashed potatoes until the mixture is as thick as heavy cream.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Long boiling extracts flavour and gelatin into the stock, giving the soup body.
Onions
Frying until brown builds sweetness and savoury browned flavour in the base.
Beef fat
Frying the onions in it carries flavour and adds richness to the soup.
Mashed potatoes
Starch thickens the stock so the soup becomes creamy and heavy.

The step that matters

Stir in the mashed potatoes until thick as heavy cream. Potato starch thickens the liquid as it is stirred in. Adding too much or stirring unevenly can make the soup gluey or lumpy, so add gradually and keep the liquid moving.

“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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