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Potato Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shank, onions, beef stock, and mashed potatoes for thickness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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, then strain into a crock and let it stand.

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

Make the soup

  1. In a soup pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the beef fat and fry the sliced onions until brown.

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

  3. Stir in the mashed potatoes until the soup reaches the thickness of thick 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
Slowly simmered over two days to build a rich, beefy stock.
Onions
Frying until brown adds sweetness and deep savory color to the soup.
Beef fat
Carries the flavor of the onions and adds richness to the frying step.
Mashed potatoes
Starch thickens the soup to a creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Onions cooked slowly until browned develop sweet, deep flavor through browning reactions. Stopping early leaves a flat, raw-onion taste.

“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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