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Carrot Soup Maigre

A light carrot soup simmered with onions, 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.

  4. 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.

  3. Add the cooked strips to the strained liquid.

  4. Season with pepper and additional salt if needed.

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

  6. Optionally, add a small amount of flour and butter to thicken the soup.

  7. Optionally, cook vermicelli in the soup for 20 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 body, sweetness and flavour of the soup, with strips adding texture.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the simmering broth.
Flour and butter
Thicken the soup and add richness and body.

The step that matters

Boil gently for over an hour. Vigorous boiling can cloud the broth and break down the vegetables too far, while gentle simmering extracts flavour slowly and keeps the liquid clear.

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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