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A Finer Carrot Soup

A carrot soup made with butter, carrots, brown gravy soup, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A Finer Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and clean the carrots, removing any blemishes.

  2. Wash and dry the carrots, then slice them into quarter‑inch pieces.

Cook

  1. In a large stewpan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and stew gently for 1 hour without browning.

  3. Pour in the brown gravy soup and simmer for 50 to 60 minutes until the carrots are tender.

Strain and serve

  1. Press the mixture through a sieve or strainer.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper if desired.

  3. Boil gently for 5 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  4. Serve the soup 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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 flavour of the soup, and thicken it when pressed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the carrots cook gently in it.
Brown gravy soup
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour in which the carrots simmer until tender.

The step that matters

Stew the carrots without browning. Gentle heat softens the carrots and draws out their sweetness. Browning would create bitter, caramelised flavours that change the soup's clean taste and colour.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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