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Carrot Soup

A soup of carrots, turnip, onion, celery simmered in stock and milk, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables by cutting them into small pieces.

  2. Fry the vegetables in the butter or dripping without browning for about 15 minutes.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the stock and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes or longer if the vegetables are old.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little milk or water, pour it into the soup, stir, and boil for about 10 minutes.

  3. Serve hot with croutons or small pieces of fried or toasted bread on the side.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 thicken the soup when puréed.
Butter or dripping
Carries the flavour of the vegetables and adds richness when the soup is cooked.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes smoother and more velvety.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables without browning. Gentle frying softens the vegetables and builds flavour in the fat. If they brown, the sugars caramelise and the soup tastes bitter or darker than intended.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, 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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