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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with stock, butter, eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes and onion.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the sliced potatoes and onion. Stir until nicely colored.

Make the soup

  1. Add the stock and chopped parsley. Boil until the potatoes are perfectly soft.

  2. Pass the mixture through a colander and return it to the fire.

  3. Add salt and black pepper, then boil for five minutes.

Finish with eggs

  1. Just before removing from heat, stir in the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  2. Do not let the soup boil after adding the eggs; stir for one minute to mix well.

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

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and body that thicken the soup as they cook soft.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the onion and helps the vegetables brown lightly at the start.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the soup and thicken it gently when stirred in off the boil.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gently setting with heat. If the soup boils after they go in, they can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture. Remove from heat first and stir steadily.

Swap the onion

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

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

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