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Carrot Soup Maigre

A light carrot soup made with carrots, onion, parsley, and optional Brussels sprouts, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Add 2 ounces of coarse sea salt to 1 gallon of boiling water.

  2. Add the quartered or sliced carrots, onion, and parsley to the water.

  3. Boil gently for over an hour, then strain the liquid back into the saucepan.

Finish the soup

  1. Prepare more carrots by scraping, washing, and cutting them into strips.

  2. Boil the carrot strips until tender, then add them to the strained liquid.

  3. Season with pepper and additional salt if needed.

  4. Optionally, substitute part of the carrots with boiled Brussels sprouts.

  5. For a thicker soup, consider adding a small amount of flour and butter or cooking vermicelli in the soup for 20 minutes.

  6. You can also add celery, leeks, and turnips to the carrot stock after the fresh vegetables have stewed for about 10 minutes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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 + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main sweet flavor and body of the soup as they soften and release their sugars.
Onion
Adds savory depth to the stock as it simmers with the carrots.
Flour and butter
Optional; flour and butter thicken the soup when used sparingly.

The step that matters

Boil gently for over an hour, then strain. Gentle simmering extracts flavor without breaking down the vegetables into cloudiness, and straining leaves a clear, smooth stock. Vigorous boiling can make the liquid cloudy and muddy in taste.

Swap the brussels sprouts

The recipe marks brussels sprouts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

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