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Carrot Soup Puree, Aurore

A creamy carrot soup made with carrots, onions, celery, parsley, broth, and butter, finished with a butter swirl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Soup Puree, Aurore

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Combine carrots, butter, onions, celery, parsley (tied with a leek), salt, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and simmer until moisture is reduced, avoiding burning or browning.

  3. Add broth and cook slowly until done.

  4. Stir in thickened veal or chicken broth and boil slowly for 20 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Remove the parsley faggot.

  2. Skim the top.

  3. Strain the puree through a fine sieve.

  4. Return the puree to the saucepan to keep warm.

  5. Before serving, stir in a piece of butter until melted.

Serve

  1. Serve with small fried bread crumbs on the side.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body, colour and sweet flavour of the puree.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother mouthfeel and rounder flavour.
Onions
Build savoury aroma and sweetness as they soften in the butter.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background note to the soup.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the vegetables and sets the soup's body.

The step that matters

Cover and simmer until moisture is reduced, avoiding burning or browning.. Gentle heat draws out moisture and softens the vegetables. Too much heat scorches the sugars in the carrots and onions, causing bitter, burnt flavours that carry through the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, butter, celery, parsley, leek, sugar, veal):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, celery, parsley, leek, sugar, veal. 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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