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Carrot Soup

A soup made from stock, turnips, carrots, and onions, thickened with pulped carrot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Cook the vegetables

  1. Add turnips, carrots, and onions to the stock.

  2. Stew until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Remove the vegetables.

Strain and pulp

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Remove the red part of the carrots.

  3. Rub the pulped carrot through a colander.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with the pulped carrot until it is as thick as cream.

  2. Heat the soup well.

  3. Serve.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries most of the soup's flavour.
Turnips
Softens during stewing, adding body and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Carrots
Pulped carrot thickens the soup and adds sweetness and colour.
Onions
Release aromatic flavour and savoury sweetness as they stew.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with the pulped carrot until it is as thick as cream.. Pulped carrot holds water and thickens as it heats and cools, so add it gradually and stop at a cream-like consistency. Adding too much makes the soup pasty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, 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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