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A Carrot Soup

A soup made from boiled carrots, beef gravy, butter, and flour, optionally with rice or vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,477 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Slice and boil the carrots in water until tender.

  2. Pulp the boiled carrots through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the pulped carrots with good beef gravy and stew for a short time.

  2. Add butter and flour to thicken the soup.

  3. Optionally, add boiled rice or vermicelli 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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  2. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 of the soup once pulped.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and liquid body to the carrot base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by starch gelatinisation as it heats.

The step that matters

Add butter and flour to thicken the soup. Flour must be cooked in the hot soup so its starch swells and thickens evenly; added cold or in lumps it can clump and leave a raw floury taste.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, rice. 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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