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Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made with carrots, onion, celery, broth, and optional bones, served with toasted bread.

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 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. Wash and scrape the carrots, then slice them.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sliced carrots, onion, celery (or celery seed), and broth.

  3. Add the bones from any joint of meat if available.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cover and simmer over moderate heat for 2.5 to 3 hours until the vegetables are soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve, adding broth or hot water if too thick.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then bring to a boil again.

  2. Fry stale bread slices in a little fat until light brown, then cut into squares.

  3. Serve with toasted bread cut into dice.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 colour of the soup as they soften.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth and sweetness as it cooks down into the broth.
Celery
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth during long simmering.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries flavour and gives the soup its body.

The step that matters

Straining after the long simmer. The vegetables must be fully soft before straining, since undercooked pieces will not pass through a sieve smoothly and leave the texture grainy. Thin with broth or hot water if the mixture is too thick to pass.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, meat, pepper, 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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