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Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bones, broth, onions, turnip, pepper, salt, and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine beef bones, broth, onions, turnip, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Stew for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup over the carrots.

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape the carrots.

  2. Thinly slice the carrots.

  3. Stew until soft enough to pulp.

Finish the soup

  1. Use two wooden spoons to rub the carrots through a hair sieve or coarse cloth.

  2. Boil the pulp with the soup until thick like pea soup.

  3. Make the soup a day before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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 flavor and, once pulped, the body and color of the soup.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as it stews.
Beef bones
Add rich, savory depth to the stock during the long stew.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Rubbing the carrots through the sieve. The carrots must be fully soft before pulping, otherwise they will not pass through the sieve smoothly and the soup will be grainy. Pressing the pulp through also breaks down the cell walls, which thickens the soup as it boils.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, turnip, pepper, carrot. 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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