Skip to main content
Main

A Finer Carrot Soup

A carrot soup made with butter, carrots, brown gravy-soup, salt, and cayenne pepper, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Finer Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and clean the carrots, removing any blemishes.

  2. Wash and dry the carrots.

  3. Cut the carrots into quarter-inch slices.

Make the soup

  1. In a large stewpan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and stew gently for 1 hour without browning.

  3. Pour in the brown gravy-soup and simmer for 50 to 60 minutes until the carrots are tender.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve or strainer.

  5. Add salt and cayenne pepper if desired.

  6. Boil gently for 5 minutes.

  7. Skim off any scum.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with diced, fried bread.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

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 flavour of the soup once softened and pressed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and gently cooks the carrots without browning.
Brown gravy-soup
Supplies the liquid base that carries the carrot flavour and cooks the carrots tender.

The step that matters

Stew the carrots without browning. Cooking the carrots slowly over low heat in butter softens them and builds flavour. Browning would add bitter, toasted notes that change the soup's clean, sweet taste.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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.

More carrot soup recipes

Puree 5with Rice 3Creamy 3 See all 219 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes