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Carrot Soup

A simmered soup of carrots, celery, onion, and broth, finished with bread crumbs for thickness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the broth, carrots, celery, and onion.

  2. Cover and simmer for 2 hours or until the carrots are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a hair sieve or colander to create a smooth pulp.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the pulp to the stewpan and add more broth to achieve a thickness similar to pea soup.

  2. Stir well and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the bread crumbs and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 softened and puréed.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it cooks down.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup slightly as they absorb liquid and soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes fibres, producing a smooth pulp. Carrots must be fully soft first, or the pulp will be grainy and hard to pass through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, tea, bread, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, tea, bread, 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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