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Carrot Soup

A soup made with beef and veal gravy and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Beef and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Rub the carrots through a sieve.

  3. Add the sieved carrots to the gravy soup.

  4. Thicken the soup with 2 tablespoons of flour, stirring well.

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. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  2. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Break down into a smooth puree that gives the soup body and a sweet, earthy flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving it a fuller texture.
Gravy soup made of beef and veal
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without thorough stirring. Stirring it in well spreads the starch evenly so it dissolves and thickens smoothly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, flour. 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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