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Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with potatoes, leek, celery, milk, water, butter, and sago.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Leek and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the potatoes, leek, and celery.

  2. Melt the butter in a lined saucepan.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables and cook for about 10 minutes without browning.

Make the soup

  1. Add the milk and water, then bring to a boil for about 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the soup to the heat, adding more milk if needed and the sago.

  4. Simmer until the sago is transparent.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when cooked to thicken the soup and give it a smooth body.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables gently and carries flavour without browning them.
Sago or tapioca
Starch that thickens the soup as it simmers and turns clear when cooked through.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the texture of the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables without browning. Browned vegetables change the soup's flavour and colour, so the heat should stay gentle while the vegetables soften in the butter.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, 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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