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Cressy or Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, celery, turnip, herbs, onion, stock, and butter, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cressy or Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the carrots and add them to salted boiling water.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain off the water.

Make the soup

  1. Add the butter, sliced vegetables, herbs, and stock.

  2. Simmer for one hour.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Reheat before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried croutons.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the soup and give it sweetness and flavour.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild sweetness to the soup base.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth as it softens into the base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a fine sieve breaks down their fibres and creates a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, turnip, 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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