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Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, celery, onion, turnip, breadcrumbs, butter, mace, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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

Prepare

  1. Scrape and wash the vegetables, then cut them into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the vegetables, water, butter, breadcrumbs, and mace.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, adding more water if the soup is too thick.

  2. Boil the soup again and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Provide the main vegetable body, sweetness and colour of the soup.
Breadcrumbs
Thicken the soup and give it a smoother, more body-filled texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the vegetable base.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables and breadcrumbs through a sieve breaks them into a smooth purée. Leaving lumps or skipping this step leaves the soup coarse in texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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