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Cream of Carrot Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled carrots, milk, butter, onion, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream of Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then cut them into pieces.

  2. Place the carrots in boiling water to cover and add 1 teaspoon of salt to the boiling water.

  3. Boil the carrots for 30 to 40 minutes until tender.

  4. Drain the carrots and mash them through a fine strainer.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it boils.

  2. Add the mashed carrots to the boiling milk.

  3. Melt the butter in a frying pan and sauté the onion in the melted butter.

  4. Add the flour to the pan and stir until smooth.

  5. Gradually add 2 cups of the carrot cooking water, stirring until creamy.

  6. Combine the mixture with the milk and carrot, then strain the combined mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining salt, pepper, and parsley.

  2. Cook for an additional 3 minutes.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body, sweetness and colour of the soup once mashed.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, creamy texture when stirred into the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and carrot water. Flour must be stirred smooth and the cooking water added gradually so lumps do not form; adding liquid too fast or without stirring leaves clumps that a thickened soup cannot hide.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, milk, butter, flour, parsley, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, milk, butter, flour, parsley, 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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