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Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, ham, veal, herbs, onions, carrots, turnips, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 stock

  1. Make a rich stock with the beef, ham, fowl or veal, sweet herbs, onions, carrot, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, coarse sea salt, and cloves.

  2. Strain the stock and let it cool.

  3. Remove the fat from the stock.

Prepare the vegetables and beef

  1. Clean and boil the red part of the carrots and turnips until very tender.

  2. Pound the cooked carrots and turnips in a mortar.

  3. Warm the cold roast beef or beef steak.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the warm beef with the pounded carrots through a sieve.

  2. Add this mixture to the soup.

  3. Serve it boiling 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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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
Give the soup its colour, body and natural sweetness once pounded and sieved.
Turnips
Add body and a mild sweetness to the pureed vegetables.
Shin of beef
Builds the rich flavour and gelatin body of the stock.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the stock. Fat left on the surface of the stock makes the soup greasy and heavy on the palate. Chilling the stock after straining lets the fat solidify so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, veal, onion, carrot, pepper, turnip. 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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