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Carrot Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 soup base

  1. Combine beef broth, onions, turnip, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Stew for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup over the sliced carrots.

Finish the soup

  1. Cook until the carrots are soft.

  2. Pulp the cooked carrots through a fine sieve or coarse cloth.

  3. Return the carrot pulp to the soup.

  4. Boil until thick, similar to pea soup.

  5. Make the soup a day in advance.

  6. 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 broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavor of the whole soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften during the long stew.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild sweetness to the stewed base.
Carrots
Provide the main flavor and, once pulped, the thickening that gives the soup its body.

The step that matters

Pulp the cooked carrots through a fine sieve or coarse cloth. Pushing the carrots through a sieve breaks down their cell walls and fibers, producing a smooth texture and releasing starch that thickens the soup when it is boiled down.

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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