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Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, carrots, onions, turnip, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef hough and water.

  2. Add the carrots, onions, turnip, and celery.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 to 4 hours until the carrots are soft.

  4. Remove the meat from the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Press the vegetables through a sieve back into the soup.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil for a few minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Serve hot in a tureen with toasted bread on the side.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Break down during simmering and sieving to give the soup body, sweetness and colour.
Beef hough
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the water, giving the broth richness and body.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and bulk, thickening the soup when pressed through a sieve.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, herbal background flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming off scum while boiling. Foam rising on the surface contains coagulated proteins and impurities that can make the broth cloudy and taste bitter if left in, so it should be removed as it forms.

Swap the onion

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

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

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