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Potato Soup

A simple soup made from beef or ham bones, lean ham, potatoes, and optional onion or celery, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Smash the beef or ham bones into fragments.

  2. Add a small piece of lean ham for flavor.

  3. Boil the bones and ham in water for at least 2.5 hours.

  4. For added flavor, boil a stick of celery with the bones.

  5. Strain the liquid carefully and discard the bones and ham debris.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the liquid to the pot and place it back on the heat.

  2. Wash, peel, and cut the potatoes into small pieces.

  3. Add the potatoes to the stock and boil until they dissolve.

  4. Optionally, add one or two onions to the pot for flavor.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve and return it to the heat.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down as they boil, thickening the broth and giving the soup its body.
Beef or ham bones
Release collagen and flavor into the water, forming the base stock.

The step that matters

Boiling the potatoes until they dissolve. Potatoes thicken the soup as their starch breaks down in hot liquid. Boiling too gently or too briefly leaves the soup thin, while boiling too hard after the starch has released can make it gluey. Watch the texture rather than the clock.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, potato, celery, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, potato, celery, pepper. 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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