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Carrot Soup

A broth-based soup made with boiled mutton or beef broth, beef bones, carrots, onions, turnip, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the broth, beef bones, onions, turnip, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup over the carrots.

Cook and puree the carrots

  1. Scrape the carrots and thinly slice them.

  2. Cook until the carrots are soft enough to puree.

  3. Pass the carrot puree through a fine sieve or cloth back into the soup.

  4. Add cayenne pepper to taste.

  5. Prepare this soup the day before serving.

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 + turniptop 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. 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. 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

Carrots
Provide the main body, sweetness and color, and thicken the soup when pureed.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Beef bones
Add savory depth and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavor to the broth.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Pass the carrot puree through a fine sieve or cloth. Straining removes fibers and small bits so the soup becomes smooth and velvety rather than grainy. Pushing the puree through a fine sieve also keeps the texture even.

Swap the onion

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

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

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