Name: Carrot Soup
Ingredients: 3 carrots; 1 onion; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 turnip; 4 cups water; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Optional: cream for serving

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

Prepare

Grate the red part of the carrots.
Chop the turnip, white part of the carrots, and onion into small pieces.

Make the soup

In a pot, melt the butter and fry the chopped vegetables until softened.
Add the water and simmer gently for 1 hour.
Strain the soup over the grated carrot.
Season with salt and pepper, then simmer together for an additional 20 minutes.
Serve with a little cream if desired.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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.
Onion: Adds savoury depth and aroma when softened in butter.
Butter: Carries flavour during frying and adds richness to the soup.
Turnip: Adds body and a mildly sharp, earthy note to the soup.

Swap the turnip

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

Potatofits better
Leekfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, butter, pepper, cream. 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.