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Soup

Crecy Soupe a LA Reine

A carrot, onion, turnip, ham, and parsley soup thickened with flour, seasoned with salt and sugar, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crecy Soupe a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and slice the carrots thinly, removing the exterior red but not the center.

  2. Peel and slice the onion and turnip, and chop the ham and parsley.

  3. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the vegetables and ham until light yellow.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and water to the pan.

  3. Stew until perfectly tender.

  4. Mix in the flour smoothly.

  5. Add the stock.

  6. Season with salt and sugar.

  7. Bring to a boil for 15 minutes.

  8. Pass the soup through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the vegetables and adds richness during frying.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it has a smooth, body-rich texture.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and supplies savoury depth.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the frying base.
Onion
Builds aromatic flavour as it softens and browns gently in butter.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour smoothly. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid or unevenly, leaving lumps. Stirring it into the fat and vegetables first, then adding liquid gradually, helps it disperse and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, ham, parsley, butter, flour, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, ham, parsley, butter, flour, sugar. 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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