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Excellent Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made with meat broth, onions, carrots, and optional beetroot, simmered and thickened with carrot pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 699 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Excellent Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the meat broth, onions, beetroot (if using), pepper, salt, and beef bones.

  2. Stew the mixture for 2-3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup and pour it over the scraped and sliced carrots.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil until the carrots are soft enough to be pulped.

  2. Use wooden spoons to push the carrot pulp through a sieve into the soup.

  3. Boil the pulp with the soup until thickened, then season with salt and cayenne pepper before serving.

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. Beetroot + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beetroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 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
Break down into pulp to give the soup its body and thickness.
Meat broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the savory flavor of the soup.
Beef bones
Add gelatin and richness to the broth as it stews.
Onions
Contribute savory sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Pushing the carrot pulp through the sieve. Carrots must be cooked until fully soft so they press into a smooth pulp. Undercooked carrots stay fibrous and leave lumps, so the soup will not thicken evenly.

Swap the beetroot

The recipe marks beetroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, pepper, beef, carrot):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, pepper, beef, 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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