Vichyssoise
Leek and potato soup enriched with cream and served cold. Invented in New York by a French chef, which the French have never entirely forgiven.
Photograph credit: Vichyssoise potato and leek cold soup Vikings Luxury Dinner Buffet 26 January 2025… by Valenzuela400 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
What Goes With It
- Baguette
- A glass of Sancerre
- Radishes and butter
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: French Baguette, Fougasse, French Lentils.
How to Cook Vichyssoise
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Melt the butter and sweat the leeks and onion over low heat for 15 minutes, covered, until completely soft. Do not let them colour at all.
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Add the potatoes and the stock and simmer 20 minutes, until the potato falls apart.
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Season with the 1.5 tsp salt and the white pepper.
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Blend until absolutely smooth, then pass through a fine sieve — this is what separates a good vichyssoise from a rough leek soup.
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Stir in the cream and leave to cool, then chill at least 240 minutes until properly cold.
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Taste again once cold and add the extra salt. It will need more than you expect.
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Serve in cold bowls with chives and a thread of olive oil.
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Ingredient substitutions.
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Worth Knowing Before You Cook
Do not colour the leeks. Grey flecks in a white soup.
Sieve it after blending.
Season again when cold. Cold hides salt.
If You're Missing Something
- In a sauce, full-fat crème fraîche can usually take the place of the double cream; single cream is thinner and more likely to split if it boils, so keep it below a simmer.
Leftovers
Refrigerated for 3 days. Stir well before serving. It does not freeze — the cream splits.
Vichyssoise: Your Questions Answered
How long does Vichyssoise take to make?
20 minutes of preparation and 35 minutes of cooking, plus 4 hours of chilling, so allow 4 hours 55 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling completely, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 6.
Vichyssoise Nutrition Facts
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: where a line offers a choice of foods, only one of them is counted; part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
Vegetarian when made with vegetable stock rather than chicken stock.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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