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Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, celery, onion, broth, and toasted bread, simmered until soft and pureed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots, then peel off the red outside.

  2. Chop the onion and add it to a gallon stew-pan with the carrots and celery.

  3. Pour in the broth and cover the pan.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook on low heat for 2.5 hours until the carrots are soft.

  2. Optionally, add 1 cup of bread crumbs and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon, adding more broth to achieve a thick consistency.

Serve

  1. Heat the soup in a clean stew-pan, season with salt, and serve 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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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
Form the main body of the soup and give it sweetness and colour.
Broth
Provides the liquid that softens the vegetables and carries the flavour of the soup.
Celery
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the base as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth of flavour as it softens in the pan.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. The cooked vegetables must be soft enough to pass through the sieve smoothly. Pushing them through gives the soup a smooth, thick texture, and adding broth adjusts the consistency if it is too stiff.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, beef, 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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