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Potato Soup

A simple potato soup with leeks, rice, bread, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add the potatoes, bread, and leeks to the boiling water.

  3. Cover and let it boil briskly.

  4. After a few minutes, add the rice, salt, and pepper.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 1 hour until all ingredients are tender.

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

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

  2. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch breaks down as they cook, giving the soup body and a creamy texture.
Bread
Its starch dissolves into the broth, thickening the soup and adding body.
Leeks
They soften and release mild onion-like sweetness into the broth.
Rice
Its starch swells and releases into the liquid, thickening the soup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and let it simmer for 1 hour. A gentle simmer cooks the potatoes, rice and leeks evenly until tender. A hard boil can break up the potatoes and rice and make the soup cloudy, so keep the heat low enough for small, steady bubbles.

Swap the leek

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, bread, rice, 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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