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Soup

Flemish Soup

A creamy soup of butter, onions, celery, potatoes, and macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Flemish 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 ↓

Flemish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and chopped celery, and cook gently for 1 hour.

  3. In a separate saucepan, boil the quartered potatoes until tender.

  4. Drain the potatoes and add them to the onion and celery mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Once the potatoes are dissolved, strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Stir in the cream and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the cooked macaroni just before serving.

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

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

  3. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Onions
Cooked slowly, they release sweetness and build the soup's base flavour.
Celery
Cooked gently with the onions, it adds savoury aroma and body to the soup.
Potatoes
Break down when cooked, thickening the soup and giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished soup a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Butter
Fat that softens the onions and celery and carries aroma into the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions and celery gently. Cooking over low heat for a full hour softens the vegetables and draws out their sweetness without browning. Rushing this step leaves a sharper, less rounded flavour in the base.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, potato, pepper, cream. 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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