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Carrot Soup

A soup made from beef bones, broth, onions, turnip, carrots, and spices, thickened by pulping carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 bones, beef broth, onions, turnip, pepper, and salt in a saucepan and stew for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the soup over the sliced carrots and stew until the carrots are soft enough to pulp.

Finish and serve

  1. Use two wooden spoons to rub the carrot pulp through a fine sieve or coarse cloth back into the soup.

  2. The soup should be as thick as pea soup.

  3. Make the soup a day in advance and add Cayenne 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.

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

Carrots
Break down into pulp to give the soup body and natural sweetness.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they soften during the long stew.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth during the long simmer.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the stewed base.

The step that matters

Rubbing the carrot pulp through the sieve. Carrots must be soft enough to pulp before straining. Pressing them through a fine sieve or cloth breaks down the fibres and makes the soup smooth and thick. Under-cooked carrots will not pass through and leave the texture gritty.

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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