Skip to main content
Main

Carrot Soup

A soup made from carrots, celery, onion, turnip, breadcrumbs, butter, mace, pepper, sea salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Prepare

  1. Scrape and wash the vegetables, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. In a pot, combine the vegetables, water, butter, breadcrumbs, and mace.

Cook and strain

  1. Bring to a boil and cook until the vegetables are tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, adding water if the soup is too thick.

  2. Boil the soup again and 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. 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. Celery + turniptop 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. Onion + turniptop 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
Provide the main body, sweetness and colour of the soup.
Allinson breadcrumbs
Thicken the soup and give it body as they soften in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the base of the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the pot.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cooked mixture through a sieve. Pressing the tender vegetables and breadcrumbs through a sieve breaks down their fibres and starch, giving the soup a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves a coarse, grainy soup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, onion, turnip, butter, 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.

More carrot soup recipes

Puree 5with Rice 3Creamy 3 See all 219 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes