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Cream of Potato Soup

A creamy soup made with boiled potatoes, milk, parsley, celery, onion, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Potato Soup

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Heat the milk in a farina boiler.

  2. Add parsley, celery, and onion to the boiling milk.

  3. Peel and boil the potatoes in water until soft.

  4. Drain the water from the potatoes and mash them.

  5. Stir the mashed potatoes into the boiling milk mixture.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Beat the egg thoroughly just before serving.

  2. Place a tablespoon of the beaten egg on each plate.

  3. Pour the soup over the egg and serve immediately.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Potatoes
Mashed into the milk to thicken the soup and give it body.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the soup when poured over it.

The step that matters

Pour the soup over the egg and serve immediately. The hot soup cooks the beaten egg on contact. Serving at once keeps the egg tender and the soup at a good temperature, while waiting lets the egg set and the texture turn dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parsley, celery, potato, pepper, egg. 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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