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Potato Soup

A simple potato soup made with potatoes, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaf, butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Potato Soup

Why it works: Parsley and celery 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

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the sliced potatoes in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the water.

  3. Return the potatoes to the pot with 2 quarts of cold water, minced onion, parsley, bay leaf, and celery.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

  5. Strain through a colander.

  6. Return the strained soup to the pot.

Thicken and finish

  1. Bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling soup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour into a tureen.

  6. Add the heated milk.

  7. Serve.

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

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

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

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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
Break down during boiling to give the soup its body and thickness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and stirred into the boiling liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if added raw or unevenly, leaving lumps. Mixing it smooth with butter first and stirring it into boiling liquid lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, celery, butter, flour, pepper, 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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