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Cream of Beet Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled beets, stock, and thickened with butter or roux, seasoned with pepper, paprika, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,057 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cream of Beet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beets

  1. Boil the beets in their skins until tender, being careful not to let them bleed white.

  2. Scrape off the skins of the beets.

  3. Chop the beets finely.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the chopped beets through a colander into a quart of white stock.

  2. Add floured butter or roux to thicken the soup.

  3. Season with white pepper or paprika and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Veal + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beets
Provide the main flavour, sweetness and the deep red colour of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the puréed beets and sets the soup's body.
Floured butter or roux
Thickens the soup so it has a creamy, smooth body.

The step that matters

Boil the beets in their skins without letting them bleed. Beets lose their red pigment and sugars into boiling water if cut or pierced, so leaving the skins on until tender keeps colour and flavour in the beet and gives a richer, brighter soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter. 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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