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Carrot Soup Maigre

A light carrot soup made by simmering carrots, onion, parsley, and optional Brussels sprouts in salted water, then thickened with flour, butter, or vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Add 2 ounces of coarse sea salt to 1 gallon of boiling water.

  2. Add the quartered or sliced carrots, onion, and parsley to the water.

  3. Boil gently for over an hour.

  4. Strain the liquid back into the saucepan.

Prepare the carrots

  1. Prepare more carrots by scraping them, then wash the scraped carrots.

  2. Cut the carrots into strips the size of large macaroni, then cut the strips into half‑finger lengths.

  3. Boil the strips until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Combine the tender carrots with the strained liquid in a tureen.

  2. Season with pepper.

  3. Add additional salt if needed.

  4. Optionally, substitute part of the carrots with boiled Brussels sprouts.

  5. For thickening, consider adding a small amount of flour and butter.

  6. For thickening, consider cooking vermicelli in the soup for 20 minutes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Give the soup its main body, flavour and sweetness as they cook down.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the simmering stock.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the carrots and broth taste well seasoned.

The step that matters

Boil gently for over an hour. A gentle simmer extracts flavour slowly and keeps the broth clear; a hard rolling boil can cloud the liquid and break down the vegetables too far.

Swap the brussels sprouts

The recipe marks brussels sprouts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, pepper, flour, butter. 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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