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Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, butter, stock, salt, and cayenne pepper, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and cut out all specks from the carrots, wash, and dry them.

  2. Slice the carrots into quarter‑inch pieces.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and stew gently for 1 hour without browning.

  3. Add the stock or gravy soup and simmer until the carrots are tender, about 1 hour.

  4. Press the mixture through a strainer and add salt and cayenne if needed.

  5. Boil gently for 6 minutes, skim well, and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Form the main body of the soup and, once pressed, give it its thick texture and sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the carrots soften gently in the pan.
Stock or gravy soup
Supplies the liquid that carries the carrot flavour and lets the carrots cook until tender.

The step that matters

Stewing the carrots without browning. Stewing gently in butter softens the carrots and draws out their sweetness. If the heat is too high and they brown, the soup takes on bitter, toasted notes instead of a clean, sweet carrot flavour.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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