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Carrot Soup

A soup made from beef stock, carrots, turnips, and roast beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make a rich stock with the shin of beef, ham, fowl or veal, sweet herbs, onions, a carrot, black and Jamaica pepper, salt, and cloves.

  2. Strain the stock and remove fat when it is cold.

Prepare the vegetables and beef

  1. Clean and boil the red part of the carrots and turnips until very tender.

  2. Pound the carrots and turnips in a mortar.

  3. Warm the cold roast beef or steak and rub it with the carrot mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add this to the stock and serve boiling hot.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Pounded and sieved, they thicken the soup and give it body and colour.
Turnips
Boiled until very tender and pounded, they add body to the puree.
Cold roast beef or beef steak
Warmed and rubbed through a sieve, it adds meaty flavour and body to the soup.
Shin of beef
Simmered for a long time, it gives the stock its rich, savoury base.

The step that matters

Rub the carrot mixture through a sieve. Pounding and sieving breaks the cooked vegetables and meat into fine particles, which gives the soup a smooth, even texture. Coarse pieces left behind make the soup grainy.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, veal, onion, carrot, butter, pepper. 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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