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Carrot Soup Puree, Aurore

A pureed carrot soup made with carrots, onions, celery, parsley, butter, broth, and served with fried bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Carrot Soup Puree, Aurore

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the carrots into fine pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the carrots, butter, onions, celery, parsley faggot, salt, and sugar.

  3. Cover and simmer until moisture is reduced, avoiding burning or browning.

Make the soup

  1. Add the quart of broth and cook slowly until done.

  2. Stir in the gallon of thickened veal or chicken broth and boil slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the faggot, skim the top, and strain the puree through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the puree to the saucepan to keep warm.

  2. Before serving, stir in a piece of butter until melted.

  3. Serve with small fried bread crumbs on the side.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the puree, giving flavor, color and bulk.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aroma as they soften during the initial simmer.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor to the soup base.
Broth
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and carries the flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until moisture is reduced without browning. Cooking the vegetables gently drives off water so the flavor concentrates. Browning or burning at this stage adds bitter, scorched notes that carry through the whole puree.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, butter, celery, parsley, leek, sugar, veal):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, celery, parsley, leek, sugar, veal. 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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