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Carrot Soup

A creamy soup made from carrots, potatoes, turnip, and onion simmered with bone broth, finished with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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

Make the broth

  1. Cover the bones with 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Add the sliced onion and 2 tablespoons of butter to a pot and fry until golden.

  3. Add the potato, turnip, and carrots to the pot.

  4. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve, removing the bones.

  6. Press the vegetables through the sieve to extract the puree.

Finish the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the vegetable broth, skimming off any fat.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in ½ pint of hot cream.

  4. Serve the soup smooth and velvety, with a consistency similar to pea soup.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Carrots
Provide the main flavour and body of the puree, along with natural sweetness.
Potato
Starch that thickens the puree and gives it a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour when the onion is fried.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked into butter, giving body to the soup.
Hot cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Flour must be cooked smooth in the butter before the broth is added, or it forms lumps. Gradual addition of the broth keeps the thickening even.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, potato, turnip, carrot, flour, 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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