Skip to main content
Main

Carrot Soup

A soup made with carrots, turnips, celery, onions, butter, flour, and stock.

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

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until lightly browned.

  3. Add the finely chopped onions and fry until golden.

  4. Pour in the soup stock and add the turnips, celery, and grated carrots.

  5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup and helps it hold a smooth body once cooked.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they soften and turn golden in the butter.
Carrots
Provide the main colour and natural sweetness of the soup.
Turnips
Add earthy flavour and body as they simmer until tender.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in butter until lightly browned removes its raw taste and gives the soup a nuttier flavour. Stop too early and the soup may taste floury; go too far and it turns bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, turnip, celery, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, turnip, celery, carrot. 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.

More carrot soup recipes

Puree 5with Rice 3Creamy 3 See all 219 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes