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Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made from beef bones, broth, onions, turnip, carrots, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 stock

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

  2. Stew for 3 hours.

Pulp the carrots

  1. Strain the soup over the sliced carrots.

  2. Stew until the carrots are soft enough to pulp.

  3. Use two wooden spoons to rub the carrots through a fine sieve or coarse cloth into the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Ensure the soup is as thick as pea soup.

  2. Make the soup a day in advance.

  3. Add Cayenne pepper to taste.

  4. Only pulp the red part of the carrots.

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

Beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth during long stewing, giving body.
Carrots
When softened and pulped, they thicken the soup and add natural sweetness.
Onions
Their sugars brown and soften during stewing, adding depth and aroma to the base.
Beef or mutton broth
Forms the liquid base that carries flavour and keeps the soup moist.

The step that matters

Stew the carrots until fully soft before pulping. Carrots that are not soft enough resist the sieve, leaving lumps and less thickening starch-like body. Fully cooked cell walls break down, so the pulp passes smoothly and thickens the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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