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Soup

Crecy Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, turnip, celery, onion, and bacon, simmered in water and finished with butter.

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

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the vegetables

  1. Combine sliced carrots, onion, turnip, and celery with boiling water in a pot.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the vegetables, saving the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the strained vegetables and bacon scraps if using.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Heat until very hot.

  5. Cover the saucepan.

  6. Cook until the vegetables are very soft.

  7. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, gradually adding the reserved cooking water.

  8. Mix well.

  9. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  10. Simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  11. Stir in a small piece of butter 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Give the soup its sweetness, body and colour when cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens into the base.
Turnip
Contributes body and a mild, slightly peppery flavour to the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour that supports the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, gradually adding the reserved cooking water. Pushing the very soft vegetables through a sieve breaks down their cell walls into a smooth purée. Adding the cooking water a little at a time lets you control thickness so the soup does not become too thick or grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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