Skip to main content
Main

Carrot Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled carrots, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Cream Soup

2 quarts of soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice enough carrots to fill a pint bowl.

  2. Boil the carrots in 1 quart of boiling water with a little salt until soft enough to pass through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, mix the flour and butter until bubbling.

  2. Stir this mixture into 1 quart of hot milk and the carrot pulp.

  3. Add enough hot water to make 2 quarts of soup.

  4. Season with 1 teaspoon of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 flavour and body of the soup once boiled and sieved into a pulp.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and milk, giving it a creamy texture.
Butter
Cooks with the flour to form a roux and adds richness to the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, mellowing the carrot flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and butter until bubbling. Cooking flour in butter until bubbling forms a roux. If it is not cooked enough, the soup can taste pasty; if it is stirred in unevenly, lumps form. Stirring the hot mixture into the hot milk and carrot pulp gradually keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes