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Carrot Soup

A soup made with beef bones, broth, onions, turnip, carrots, and seasonings, simmered and pureed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 broth

  1. In a saucepan, combine beef bones, broth, onions, turnip, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew for 3 hours.

  3. Scrape the carrots from the pot.

Prepare the carrots

  1. Thinly slice the carrots.

  2. Strain the soup over the carrots.

  3. Stew the carrots until soft.

  4. Pulp the carrots through a fine sieve or cloth.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the carrot pulp with the soup until thick, like pea soup.

  2. Make the soup a day in advance.

  3. Add Cayenne pepper to taste.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Beef bones
Release savoury flavour and body into the long-simmered broth.
Carrots
Provide sweetness, colour, and thickening body once pulped and boiled down.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften during stewing.
Turnip
Adds a mild, earthy sweetness to the broth.
Beef or mutton broth
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the carrot pulp with the soup until thick. Reducing a starchy vegetable purée concentrates flavour and thickens it, but the thick mixture can scorch on the bottom of the pan, so stir often and keep the heat moderate.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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