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Carrot Soup

A broth-based soup with carrots, onions, turnip, and seasonings, simmered until the carrots are pulped.

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 broth base

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

  2. Stew for 3 hours.

  3. Scrape and thinly slice the carrots.

  4. Strain the soup over the carrots.

  5. Stew until soft enough to pulp.

Pulp and finish

  1. Use two wooden spoons to rub the carrots through a sieve or cloth.

  2. Boil the pulp with the soup until thick like pea soup.

  3. Make the soup a day in advance.

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. Carrot + peppertop 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 flavour of the soup.
Carrots
Provide the main body, colour and sweetness once pulped and thickened.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it stews.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild earthy flavour to the stewed base.

The step that matters

Rubbing the carrots through the sieve. Carrots must be stewed until fully soft, or they will not pass through the sieve as a smooth pulp. Pulping them thoroughly gives the soup its body and smooth texture, while leftover lumps would make it grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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