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Carrot Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, ham, veal, carrots, turnips, onions, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 stock

  1. Make a rich stock with the beef, ham, fowl or piece of veal, sweet herbs, onions, a carrot, black and Jamaica pepper, salt, and cloves.

  2. Strain the stock and let it cool; remove all the fat.

Prepare the vegetables and meat

  1. Clean and boil the red part of the carrots and turnips until very tender.

  2. Pound the cooked carrots and turnips in a mortar.

  3. Warm the cold roast beef or steak and rub it with the carrots through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the mixture to the soup and serve it boiling hot.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 sweetness of the soup once puréed.
Turnips
Add soft bulk and a mild sweetness that thickens the purée.
Shin of beef
Gives the stock its meaty depth and body.
Cold roast beef or beef steak
Adds meaty flavour and body when rubbed through the sieve into the soup.

The step that matters

Remove all the fat from the stock. Fat left on the cooled stock floats and makes the soup greasy, so it must be skimmed off completely before the vegetables are added.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, veal, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, veal, onion, carrot, turnip, 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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