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Carrot Soup

A soup made with carrots, turnip, onions, celery, stock, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine 2 quarts of stock in a stewpan.

  2. Add 6 grated or finely chopped carrots, 1 small turnip, 2 chopped onions and a blade of celery (optional).

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little water.

  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 hours until the carrots are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the soup through a wire sieve or colander, rubbing the carrots through.

  2. Return the soup to the pot to warm, then season with salt and pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Break down during simmering to give the soup its body and sweet flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and body as it softens in the stock.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars into the stock.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixed with water. Flour dispersed in liquid without first being mixed with water clumps into lumps that stay in the soup. Mixing it smooth first lets it thicken the stock evenly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, flour, pepper. 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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