Name: Cream Potato Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart water; 2 pints milk; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; Salt to taste

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes in water until soft, reducing the water to half.
Mash the potatoes in the water and pass through a sieve to yield 1 quart of potato and water mixture.
Add the milk and return to the fire.
When the soup is boiling, stir in the butter and add salt to taste.
Cook until creamy.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Milk + parsleytop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,011 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).