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Crecy Soup

A soup made from turnip, carrots, onion, butter, water, and bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash and peel the turnip and carrots, then slice them finely.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables and sauté until they are well colored but not browned.

  4. Pour in 3 pints of water and season with salt. Let it simmer for 2 hours.

  5. After cooking, press the mixture through a colander back into the saucepan.

  6. Add hot water to achieve the desired consistency.

Make the croutons and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and add the bread cubes.

  2. Shake the pan over the heat until the bread cubes are golden brown.

  3. Pour the soup into a tureen and serve with the 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnip
Gives the soup its body and mild, slightly peppery flavour as it softens during simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, and thicken the soup as they break down when pressed.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth and savory flavor when sautéed in butter.
Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness to the vegetables during the initial sauté.

The step that matters

Sautéing the sliced vegetables. Cooking them until well colored but not browned builds flavor through gentle caramelization without scorching, which would make the soup taste bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, butter, 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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