Skip to main content
Main

Puree Soup

A carrot and onion puree soup served with toasted bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Puree Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and onion, sauté until well colored but not browned.

  3. Pour in the water and season with salt.

  4. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

  5. Press the cooked vegetables through a sieve back into the pan.

  6. Add hot water or stock to achieve the desired consistency.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt the additional butter and add the bread squares.

  2. Fry the bread until golden brown, shaking the pan occasionally.

  3. Serve the soup over the toasted bread squares.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 puree.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth and savoury sweetness as it softens without browning.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the vegetables and gives the soup a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Bread
Soaks up the soup and turns golden and crisp when fried in butter.

The step that matters

Sauté the carrots and onion without browning. Gentle cooking softens the vegetables and develops a sweet, mild flavour. Browning creates bitter, harsh notes that carry into the soup and mask the carrot flavour.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes