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Beetroot Soup

A creamy beetroot soup made with boiled beetroot, onion, stock, milk, cream, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beetroot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in a pot and cook onion for 8 to 10 minutes without browning.

  2. Add white stock, sliced beetroot, and seasoning, then simmer for 30 to 60 minutes.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. Blend arrowroot smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Pour arrowroot mixture into soup and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in heated cream and remaining milk.

  4. Optionally add a little carmine to enhance color.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Beetroot + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Beetroot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

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

  5. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled beetroot
Provides the main body of flavor and the soup's deep color.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, glossy texture when boiled.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavor of the soup.
Cream
Adds fat for a silkier, richer mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness as it softens in butter.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness to the base.

The step that matters

Bring the arrowroot mixture to a boil. Arrowroot must reach a boil to thicken fully, but prolonged boiling can thin it again. Blending it smoothly with cold liquid first prevents lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, arrowroot, milk, butter, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, arrowroot, milk, butter, cream. 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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