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Potato and Leek Soup

A soup made from boiled potatoes and leeks, blended and thickened with tapioca, finished with milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and leek work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Potato and Leek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the potatoes and leeks into pieces.

  2. In a clean saucepan, bring 3 pints of water to a boil and add the vegetables.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are soft enough to pulp.

  4. Rub the vegetables through a fine wire sieve.

  5. Return the puree and water to the saucepan.

Finish the soup

  1. Add ½ pint of skim milk and 2 ounces of sweet butter.

  2. When just boiling, gradually stir in 2 ounces of crushed tapioca.

  3. Stir and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and rubbed through a sieve, giving the soup its thick body.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like flavour and, once pulped, help give the soup its body.
Skim milk
Adds creaminess and a mild dairy flavour while keeping the soup lighter in fat.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a rounded, smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Crushed tapioca
Starch that thickens the soup as it boils, giving a smoother, heavier texture.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring in the tapioca. Added all at once, tapioca clumps and won't disperse evenly. Adding it slowly while the liquid is just boiling and stirring keeps it smooth, and boiling for the full time lets the starch swell fully and thicken the soup.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, 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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