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Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, onion, turnip, celery seeds, bread crumbs, and broth, finished with cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots, onion, and turnip into pieces.

  2. Mix with celery seeds and bread crumbs.

Cook and strain

  1. Add boiling water and season with cayenne, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to the broth and add sweet cream or milk.

  2. Boil again and 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body, sweetness and flavour of the soup.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the puréed vegetables.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup and give it a fuller texture once the vegetables are softened.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds fat and richness, softening flavour and giving a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve. Pushing the softened vegetables through the sieve breaks down their cell walls into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, bread, pepper, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, bread, pepper, cream. 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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