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Carrot Soup

A soup made from boiled mutton or beef broth, beef bones, carrots, onions, turnip, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Combine the broth, beef bones, onions, turnip, salt, and pepper in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours.

Cook the carrots

  1. Scrape the carrots.

  2. Slice the carrots thinly.

  3. Strain the soup over the carrots.

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

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the carrot puree with the soup until it reaches the consistency of pea soup.

  2. Add cayenne pepper to taste.

  3. Prepare this soup a day in advance for best flavor.

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 flavor, natural sweetness, and starch that thickens the soup when pureed.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and sets the soup's volume.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor during long simmering, giving the broth more body.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften in the simmering broth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory broth and earthy carrots.

The step that matters

Boil the carrot puree with the soup until it reaches the consistency of pea soup.. Boiling reduces the liquid and lets starch from the pureed carrots thicken the soup. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while boiling too long makes it heavy and pasty.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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