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Crecy Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, turnip, celery, onion, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vegetable base

  1. Combine sliced carrots, onion, turnip, and celery with boiling water in a pot.

  2. Cook the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the vegetables, saving the cooking water.

Finish the soup

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add the strained vegetables and sugar.

  2. Heat until very hot, then cover and cook until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl, gradually adding the reserved cooking water. Mix well.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  5. Stir in a small piece of butter 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 + 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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness, body and colour to the soup once puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as it softens into the base.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour and body to the purée.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Rubbing the vegetables through a fine sieve. Pushing the soft vegetables through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls, producing a smooth purée. Adding the reserved cooking water gradually lets you control the thickness, so the soup does not become too thick or grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, sugar, turnip, celery. 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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