Why it works: Carrot and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,083 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Carrot Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the carrots into slices.
Melt the butter over high heat in a stewpan.
Add the sliced carrots and stir until browned.
Simmer and strain
Add a little stock and let it simmer.
Rub the mixture through a sieve to remove solids.
Skim off the fat.
Let it simmer for a long time before serving.
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.
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Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 flavor of the soup once cooked and strained.
- Butter
- Carries flavor and adds richness and fat, and browns the carrots in the pan.
The step that matters
Browning the carrots in the butter. Over high heat, butter can scorch and its milk solids can burn before the carrots brown. Browning builds deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction, so stir steadily and watch the color closely.
“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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