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Potato Soup with Rivels

A potato soup thickened with rivels made from flour and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Soup with Rivels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the potatoes and onion with the butter until done.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the rivels

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and a pinch of salt, then rub in the beaten egg until small rivels form.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir the rivels into the soup a little at a time.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes and serve.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down as they cook and give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savory depth to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the onion and potatoes as they cook.
Flour
Forms the starchy base of the rivels, which set and firm up in the hot soup.
Egg
Binds the flour into small, tender crumbs that hold their shape.

The step that matters

Adding the rivels to the soup. Adding them a little at a time keeps them from clumping together. Flour starch needs to be surrounded by hot liquid to swell and cook through, so dumping them in at once leaves dry, raw lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, flour, egg. 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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