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Crecy Soup

A carrot and onion soup made with rich brown stock, sweetened with sugar, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrot, then slice it thinly, avoiding the yellow center.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook the carrot and onion in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Rub the carrot through a colander and add it to the stock, heating again.

Season and serve

  1. Stir in the sugar, salt, and pepper, and serve hot with croutons.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Provides the main flavor, color, and body of the soup when pureed.
Rich brown stock
Supplies the liquid base and savory depth of the soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavor as it softens during cooking.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the carrot flavor.

The step that matters

Rub the carrot through a colander. Pressing the cooked carrot through a strainer breaks down its fibers so the soup becomes smooth rather than stringy or grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, 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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