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Carrot Soup

A veal and carrot soup simmered with celery, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a soup kettle, combine the veal, cold water, celery (or celery seed), cayenne pepper, salt, and chopped carrots.

  2. Cover the kettle and bring to a boil over low heat.

  3. Let it simmer for 3 hours.

  4. Remove the knuckle of veal and serve the soup, strained or unstrained as preferred.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 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

Veal knuckle
Its collagen breaks down into gelatin during long simmering, giving the broth body and mouthfeel.
Carrots
Their natural sugars add sweetness, and their pulp adds body and color to the soup.
Celery
Adds a savory, herbal aroma that rounds out the flavor of the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the soup at a gentle simmer. A gentle simmer draws flavor and gelatin from the veal and carrots slowly. Vigorous boiling can break up the vegetables and churn fat into the broth, leaving it cloudy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, carrot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, carrot. 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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