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Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with stock, butter, and milk, seasoned with celery seed, pepper, and sea salt.

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

Why it works: Celery and parsley 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 ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil or steam the potatoes until very dry.

  2. Mash the potatoes very finely with a fork.

  3. Gradually add the mashed potatoes to the boiling stock.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Add seasoning and simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Stir in the butter and milk.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread or toast.

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

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

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

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

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

Potatoes
Provide the starch that thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, softening the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the mashed potatoes to the boiling stock. Adding potato slowly while the stock is boiling and stirring helps it disperse evenly, so lumps do not form. Potato starch thickens the liquid as it cooks, so dumping it in at once can leave clumps that sieving may not fully remove.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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