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Common Carrot Soup

A soup made from boiled carrots blended with beef broth, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Common Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots in slightly salted water until tender.

  2. Mash the carrots to a smooth paste.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the mashed carrots with the boiling beef broth or gravy soup.

  2. Strain the mixture through a strainer.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Heat in a clean saucepan and serve immediately.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

Carrots
Provide the main body, sweetness and color of the soup when mashed smooth.
Beef broth or gravy soup
Supplies the liquid base and savory depth that thins the mashed carrots into soup.

The step that matters

Mashing the carrots to a smooth paste. Carrot fibers stay coarse if not fully cooked and mashed, which leaves a grainy texture. Cooking until fully tender and mashing thoroughly breaks down the cell walls so the soup pours smoothly, and straining afterward removes any remaining fibrous bits.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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