Skip to main content
Main

Carrot Soup

A clear broth made from beef bones, onions, carrots, and seasonings, served hot.

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

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef bones in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Add the salt, chopped onions, and turnip if using.

  3. Remove any scum that rises to the surface.

  4. Boil for at least 2 hours, then strain through a fine cloth.

  5. Add any egg shells to the strained broth and let it cool.

  6. Once cool, remove the fat and strain again.

Make the soup

  1. Slice the carrots thinly and place them in a bowl.

  2. Add the strained soup to the carrots.

  3. Once the carrots are soft, rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Season with sugar, cayenne, white pepper, and additional salt if needed.

Serve

  1. Reheat the soup and 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Beef bones
Long simmering extracts gelatin and savory flavor, giving the broth body and depth.
Onions
As they cook they release sugars and aromatic compounds that add sweetness and depth to the broth.
Carrots
Their starch and pectin thicken the pureed soup and add natural sweetness.
Sugar
A small pinch rounds out the flavor and balances the savory notes.

The step that matters

Remove the fat once the broth has cooled. Fat left in the broth makes the soup greasy. Once chilled, the fat solidifies on the surface, so it can be lifted off cleanly before the second straining.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, sugar, pepper, white pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, sugar, pepper, white 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.

More carrot soup recipes

Puree 5with Rice 3Creamy 3 See all 219 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes