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Carrot Soup

A vegetable 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

Prepare

  1. Peel and grate the carrots or cut them into very small pieces.

  2. In a large pot, combine 2 quarts of stock, carrots, turnip, onions, and celery.

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

Cook and strain

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 1-2 hours until the carrots are tender.

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

Finish

  1. 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
Provide the main body, sweetness and colour, and thicken the soup as they break down.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly so it has a smoother body.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften in the stock.

The step that matters

Rubbing the carrots through the sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks them into fine particles and releases their starch and pulp, which gives the soup a smooth texture. Skipping this or straining too coarsely leaves a grainy result.

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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