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Carrot Soup

A soup made with broth, beef bones, carrots, onions, turnip, sugar, cayenne pepper, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the broth, beef bones, onions, turnip, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours.

Prepare and cook the carrots

  1. Scrape the carrots.

  2. Thinly slice the carrots.

  3. Strain the soup over the carrots.

  4. Cook until the carrots are soft enough to puree.

Blend and finish

  1. Blend the carrot pulp with the soup until it reaches the consistency of pea soup.

  2. Add cayenne pepper to taste.

  3. Prepare this soup the day before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Carrots
Provide the main body, colour and sweet flavour once cooked and blended into the soup.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth during long simmering.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth as they soften and cook down.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the broth during simmering.
Sugar
Rounds out flavour and balances the savouriness of the broth.

The step that matters

Blend until the consistency of pea soup. The carrots must be cooked until soft enough to puree, then blended fully with the soup. Pulp that is not fully broken down leaves a grainy texture, while adding too much liquid thins the soup and dulls its body.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beef, carrot, turnip, pepper, sugar. 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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