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Puree of Carrots

A carrot puree soup made with stock, French roll croutons, and fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Puree of Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Grate the carrot and finely chop the onion.

  2. Skin the tomatoes and add all vegetables to a covered pot with a little beef dripping.

  3. Stew the vegetables until thoroughly cooked.

Make the soup

  1. Stir the cooked vegetables into the heated stock.

  2. Skim off excess fat and season well.

  3. Crumble the French roll into the soup and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried croutons on top.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Carrot
Grated carrot breaks down during stewing and thickens the soup into a smooth puree.
Red onion
Softens during stewing and adds savoury sweetness and body to the base.
Tomatoes
Break down into the stewed vegetables, adding acidity and moisture to the soup.
French roll
Crumbled into the soup, it absorbs liquid and helps thicken the puree.

The step that matters

Stew the vegetables until thoroughly cooked. Vegetables must be fully softened before blending or combining with stock, otherwise the puree will be grainy and the flavour raw and less developed.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, tomato, beef):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Okrafits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, beef. 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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