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Crecy Soup

A carrot puree soup made with stock, sugar, salt, pepper, and served hot with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrot

  1. Wash and scrape the carrot.

  2. Slice the outer part of the carrot into thin slices, discarding the yellow center.

Cook and purée

  1. Cook the carrot and onion in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Rub the carrot through a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the stock to the carrot puree and heat again.

  2. Stir in the sugar, salt, and pepper, and serve hot with croutons.

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.

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

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Carrot
Forms the main body and sweet, earthy flavor of the soup once puréed.
Rich brown stock
Adds liquid and savory depth, thinning the purée to soup consistency.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor that softens and blends into the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Rubbing the carrot through a colander. Pushing the cooked carrot through a sieve breaks down fibers and produces a smooth texture; skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy or stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, 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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