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Soup

Crecy Soup

A soup made from parboiled carrots, butter, sugar, salt, herbs, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Parboil the carrots in water for 10 minutes.

Make the puree

  1. Stew the parboiled carrots with fresh butter, sugar, salt, and aromatic herbs.

  2. Blend the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

Finish the soup

  1. Combine the puree with standard broth and bring to a boil.

  2. Optionally, add green peas or rice 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the soup and give it its sweet, earthy flavor and smooth texture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the puree a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the earthy flavor of the carrots.
Standard broth
Thins the puree into a soup and adds savory depth.

The step that matters

Blend the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked carrots through a sieve breaks down fibers and removes lumps, so the puree becomes smooth. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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