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Carrot Soup

A soup made from boiled carrots, onions, and turnip, pureed and seasoned with pepper, salt, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Cook the vegetables

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

  2. Discard the water.

  3. Add fresh water.

  4. Boil until the vegetables are soft.

Puree and finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a colander.

  2. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  3. Add the pureed vegetables to the soup.

  4. Boil until well combined.

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

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. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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 soup and add natural sweetness as they cook.
Onions
Add aroma and savoury depth, and soften into the puree.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild earthy flavour to the puree.

The step that matters

Boil until the vegetables are fully soft. Vegetables that are not fully softened will not break down into a smooth puree, leaving the soup grainy after it is pushed through the sieve.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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