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Potato Soup

A hearty soup made with onions, turnips, carrot, potatoes, butter, ham or bacon, parsley, flour, stock, milk, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine onions, turnips, carrot, potatoes, butter, ham or bacon, and parsley.

  2. Simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in flour and add stock and boiling milk.

  4. Bring to a boil, then season with salt and sugar.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into another pot.

  2. Boil again, skim off any foam, and serve with fried bread.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock and milk into a smoother, more velvety soup.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory aromatic base as they soften while simmering.
Ham or bacon
Contributes salty, smoky meat flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour before adding stock and milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Stirring it in evenly with the vegetables and butter first helps it disperse, so the soup thickens smoothly rather than lumpily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, potato, butter, ham, parsley, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, potato, butter, ham, parsley, flour. 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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