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Crecy Soup

A carrot-based soup thickened with butter and flour, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine carrot puree and vegetable stock in a pot.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix melted butter and flour to form a liaison.

  3. Gradually add the liaison to the soup, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook until the soup thickens and is well blended.

Serve

  1. Serve with croutons on top.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot puree
Provides the main body, sweetness and flavour of the soup.
Vegetable stock
Supplies the liquid that carries the puree and sets the soup's thinness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and coats the mouth for a smoother texture.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a liaison and stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the liaison gradually while stirring. Flour clumps if dumped in at once. Adding the butter-flour mixture slowly while stirring constantly lets starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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