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Soup

Potage a LA Crecy

A carrot and onion soup made with butter, stock, and pureed to a smooth consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 21,599 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and onions, and sauté until softened.

  3. Add enough stock to cover the vegetables and simmer until tender.

  4. Puree the mixture using a sieve or blender until smooth.

  5. 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Carrot + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,061 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 the orange color of the soup.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Sauté until softened. Cooking the vegetables gently in butter softens them and builds flavor without browning. If they brown too much, the soup tastes bitter and loses its clean color.

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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