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Soup

Common Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, water, sea salt, cayenne pepper, and bouillon, served hot with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Common Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots in salted water until very tender.

  2. Pound the carrots until extremely fine.

Make the soup

  1. Gradually mix in the boiling gravy-soup or bouillon in a ratio of 4 cups to 1 ½ pounds of carrots.

  2. Pass the mixture through a strainer.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with fried bread 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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the soup and give it its flavour and thick texture when pounded.
Gravy-soup or bouillon
Adds liquid and savoury depth, thinning the pureed carrots into a soup.

The step that matters

Pounding the carrots until extremely fine. Carrot fibres must be broken down completely so the soup becomes smooth and thick. Coarse pieces leave a grainy texture that straining may not fully fix.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread. 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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