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Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, butter or dripping, water or stock, catsup, tomato sauce, coarse sea salt, and Cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape the carrots and slice off the outer red portion, discarding the yellow inside.

  2. Cut the slices into small pieces and brown them in a frying pan with a little butter or dripping.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the browned carrots in a covered pan with cold water or stock until soft.

  2. Strain the mixture and heat the puree over the fire, adding stock as needed.

  3. Season with catsup, tomato sauce, coarse sea salt, and Cayenne pepper before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Good carrots
Form the main body and sweet flavour of the soup once cooked and pureed.
Butter or dripping
Browns the carrot pieces, adding richness and toasty flavour before stewing.
Water or stock
Softens the carrots during stewing and thins the puree to a soup consistency.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the finished soup.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity, body and savoury tomato flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the carrot pieces. Browning in fat caramelises the sugars and proteins on the surface, building deeper flavour than stewing alone. Too little heat or crowded pieces will steam them instead, leaving the soup flat and pale.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, sauce, pepper. 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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