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Carrot Soup

A soup made with carrots, turnip, onions, celery, stock, flour, milk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

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 ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine 2 quarts of stock, 6 grated or finely chopped carrots, 1 small turnip, 2 chopped onions, and a blade of celery in a stewpan.

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

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer for 2.5 hours until the carrots are tender.

Strain and season

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

  2. Return the soup to the pot to warm.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the white part of leeks cut into thin pieces and washed rice.

  5. Boil for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in 1 breakfast cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of finely chopped parsley.

  2. Boil for an additional 5 minutes 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 + 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 and natural sweetness, and thicken the soup when rubbed through a sieve.
Flour
Its starch thickens the stock as it heats, giving the soup body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of every other ingredient.
Onions
Add a savoury aromatic base that deepens the flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with water before adding it. Flour stirred directly into hot liquid clumps, leaving lumps. Mixing it first with a little cold water lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly when the soup boils.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, flour, pepper, milk, 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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