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Soup

Crecy Soup

A soup of carrots, onion, celery and stock, sieved smooth and served with forcemeat balls and a hard-boiled egg garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the carrot soup

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots.

  2. Grate the red part of the carrots only and place it in a pan with the butter and sugar.

  3. Steam gently for 45 minutes without browning.

  4. Add the stock, onion, and celery (washed and cut into 1-inch lengths).

  5. Boil for 1 hour and season to taste.

  6. Rub the mixture through a sieve, reheat, skim, and serve.

Prepare the rich soup

  1. Wash and clean all the vegetables and cut them small.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan, add the vegetables, herbs, and lemon rind, and fry for 10 minutes without browning.

  3. Soak the head in salt and water for 1 hour, then place it on top of the vegetables.

  4. Add stock or water, bring to a boil, remove scum, and simmer for 4 hours.

  5. Remove the head, strain the soup, and let it cool overnight.

Clarify and finish

  1. The next day, remove the fat from the soup and place it in a pan.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a froth and add to the soup.

  3. Heat until boiling and scum rises, let it sit for 10 minutes, then strain through a clean cloth.

  4. Reheat the strained soup, add sherry, force-meat balls, and the best part of the head cut into small pieces.

  5. Pour into a tureen and serve.

Make the garnish

  1. For the garnish, remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and place them in a bowl with chopped parsley, cayenne, raw egg yolk, and a little salt.

  2. Pound to a paste, form into nutmeg-sized balls, and simmer in boiling water for 2 minutes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour when the vegetables are gently cooked.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that extracts flavour and gives the soup its moisture.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it softens and releases its flavour into the stock.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavour that rounds out the soup's base.
Egg yolk
Binds the garnish paste so the balls hold their shape when simmered.

The step that matters

Clarifying with beaten egg whites. As the whites heat, they coagulate and trap suspended particles and scum. Straining through cloth then removes them, giving a clear soup. Heating too gently or stirring too hard breaks up the trapped solids and leaves the soup cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, butter, sugar, pepper, turnip, parsley. 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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