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Crecy Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, leeks, onion, chicken broth, and breadcrumbs, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,310 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, chopped leeks, and sliced onion; fry for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of chicken broth and add the breadcrumbs; simmer until the carrots are tender.

  4. Press the mixture through a fine sieve back into the soup pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add 2 quarts of chicken broth and stir well; bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, skimming off any fat.

  3. Strain the soup and serve in a tureen with fried bread on the side.

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 + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 colour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the vegetables during frying.
Leeks
Contribute a mild, sweet onion flavour and soften into the purée.
Breadcrumbs
Thicken the soup and give it a smoother, fuller texture.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the soup for 1 hour. Long, gentle simmering lets flavours blend and lets fat rise to the surface, where it can be skimmed. Boiling hard can break the emulsion and cloud the soup.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, leek, onion, chicken, bread):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, leek, onion, chicken, bread. 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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