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Carrot Soup

A soup of carrots, onions, and turnip simmered in beef gravy with pepper, salt, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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

Prepare the stock

  1. Draw some gravy from the gravy beef.

  2. Combine the bones and enough water to cover them in a pot; simmer for 4 hours.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrots, onions, and turnip in water for 5 minutes, then discard the water.

  2. Add fresh water to the boiled vegetables and cook until soft.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the vegetables through a colander and then through a coarse sieve, adding the liquid to the soup.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and ketchup to taste.

  3. Simmer until well combined and thickened to the consistency of 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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 body, sweetness and colour of the soup once cooked and puréed.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness as they soften into the soup.
Turnip
Contributes earthy flavour and body to the puréed vegetables.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the soup body and richness.

The step that matters

Simmering until thickened. Simmering reduces the liquid and concentrates flavour, while the pureed vegetables thicken the soup. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, and overcooking can scorch the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, carrot, turnip, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, turnip, pepper, ketchup. 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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