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Carrot Soup

A soup made with onion, carrot, turnip, rice, nut milk, salt, and browned sugar.

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 turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the onion

  1. Slice the onion and place it on an oiled baking sheet. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until rich brown.

Simmer the soup

  1. In a stew pan, combine the baked onion, sliced carrot, and sliced turnip. Cook for 1 hour.

  2. Add the rice and cook for an additional hour.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve and return it to the stove.

Finish and serve

  1. Add enough nut milk to achieve the desired consistency and season with salt.

  2. Just before serving, burn a little brown sugar and stir it into the soup for flavor and color.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browning in the oven adds deep, sweet, savory flavor to the soup.
Carrot
Gives the soup its natural sweetness, body, and orange color.
Turnip
Adds bulk and a mild, earthy flavor to the vegetable base.
Rice
Its starch thickens the simmering soup and gives it a fuller texture.
Nut milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and sets the final consistency of the soup.

The step that matters

Burning the brown sugar. Sugar goes from caramel to bitter and acrid within seconds once it darkens too far. Burn it only to a deep brown, then stir it in quickly so the soup gets color and flavor without a scorched taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, rice, milk, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, rice, milk, sugar. 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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