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Carrot Soup Maigre

A simple carrot soup made by simmering carrots, onion, parsley, and optional Brussels sprouts, then thickened with flour, butter, or vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil.

  2. Add 2 ounces of coarse sea salt to the boiling water.

  3. Add the quartered or sliced carrots, onion, and parsley to the boiling water.

  4. Boil gently for over an hour.

  5. Strain the liquid back into the saucepan.

Add the carrots and finish

  1. Prepare more carrots by scraping, washing, and cutting them into strips the size of large macaroni.

  2. Cut the strips into half-finger lengths.

  3. Boil the strips until tender.

  4. Add the boiled carrots to the strained liquid in the saucepan.

  5. Season with pepper and additional salt if needed.

  6. Optionally, substitute part of the carrots with boiled Brussels sprouts.

  7. Add a small amount of flour and butter to the soup.

  8. Cook vermicelli in the soup for 20 minutes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 of flavour and sweetness, and the bulk of the soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Flour and butter
Thicken the soup and add richness and body.

Swap the brussels sprouts

The recipe marks brussels sprouts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, pepper, flour, butter. 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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