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Soup

Flemish Soup

A creamy vegetable soup made with onions, celery, potatoes, butter, water, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 soup

  1. Melt the butter with the water over low heat.

  2. Add the onions, celery, and potatoes; simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Fill the stewpan with stock and boil for another hour until the vegetables dissolve.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the cream before adding it to the soup.

  2. Keep the soup hot in a small pot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 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 during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor as the base for cooking the vegetables.
Onions
Build savory, aromatic flavor as they soften in the soup base.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor and body as it cooks down into the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the cream before adding it to the soup. Adding cream to a very hot liquid can cause it to curdle or separate, so the cream should be heated gently and added carefully to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, butter, 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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