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Cream of Carrot Soup

A creamy soup made from grated carrots, onion, bay leaf, water, milk, corn starch, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cream of Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Grate the carrots and cover them with 1 pint of water.

  2. Add the onion and bay leaf, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion and bay leaf, then add 1 quart of milk.

  4. Mix the corn starch with a little of the milk, add to the soup, and stir until thick.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, and add the butter just before serving.

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 + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the soup base.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, silky richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch. Corn starch must be mixed with a little cold milk first so it does not clump. Once it reaches a simmer, the starch granules swell and thicken the soup; stir steadily until it is thick and glossy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, milk, corn, 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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