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A Carrot Soup

A soup made from beef, carrots, rice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine the shin of beef, water, onions, celery, parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture for 5 hours, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Once cooled, remove the fat from the surface.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the pulped carrots and boiled rice to the soup.

  2. Boil the soup again and serve hot.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Releases flavour and body into the stock during long stewing.
Carrots
Provide the main flavour, colour and thickening pulp of the soup.
Rice
Adds body and helps thicken the pulped soup.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Fat rises to the surface as the stock cools and solidifies, so skimming it once cool removes the greasy layer. Skimming while hot leaves more fat dispersed in the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, parsley, thyme, pepper, carrot, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, parsley, thyme, pepper, carrot, rice. 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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