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Crecy Soup

A hearty soup made from soup bones, vegetables, herbs, and stale bread, thickened with flour 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 stock

  1. Break the bones into small pieces and place them in a pot with 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any scum.

  3. Once the soup is clear, add the onions, carrots, celery, and bouquet of herbs.

  4. Season with salt and simmer for about 2 hours until the vegetables are tender.

  5. Remove the bones and bouquet.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and thinly slice the onions.

  2. Slice the carrots.

  3. Cut the celery into small pieces.

  4. Make a bouquet of herbs.

Finish and serve

  1. Use a potato masher to rub the remaining ingredients through a sieve and return to the pot to heat.

  2. Cut the stale bread into dice and fry in hot drippings.

  3. Place the fried bread in a soup tureen and pour the soup over it.

  4. Serve hot.

  5. If the soup settles, mix 1 tablespoon each of flour and butter into a paste and stir it into the soup.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bones
Release flavour and body into the water as they simmer for the stock.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as they cook down.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body when cooked until tender and sieved.
Celery
Adds aromatic savoriness to the stock and blended vegetable base.
Stale bread
Fried in drippings, it becomes crisp croutons that hold their texture in the soup.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum after boiling. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the stock heats. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, 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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