Skip to main content
Main

Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from stock, onion, potatoes, mace, milk, corn flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream Soup

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine stock, onion, potatoes, and mace.

  2. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  3. Strain out the onion and mace.

  4. The potatoes should have dissolved.

Finish and serve

  1. Add milk and corn flour to thicken to the consistency of cream.

  2. Stir in a little butter before serving.

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

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

  2. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 give the soup body and a thick, smooth texture.
Corn flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup a creamy consistency.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the soup's flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Add milk and corn flour to thicken to the consistency of cream.. Corn flour (cornstarch) thickens only when heated and stirred into liquid, and it can clump if added raw. Mixing it with a little cold milk first and simmering gently lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth cream.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, potato, milk, corn, flour, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, potato, milk, corn, flour, 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.

More cream soup recipes

Tapioca 33Chicken 27Barley 16Celery 16Tomato 16Veal 13 See all 22 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes