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Soup

Carrot Soup

A soup made with onions, celery, carrots, stock, and French roll crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Carrot Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add the onions and celery.

  2. Add the grated carrots and 1 pint of stock; simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in 2 quarts of stock and the crumb of the French rolls; boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and keep the soup hot without boiling.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened in butter, they build the sweet, savoury base of the soup.
Celery
Softened with the onions, it adds aromatic flavour to the soup base.
Carrots
Simmered until tender, they give the soup its main body and colour.
French rolls
Their crumb thickens the soup as it boils.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and keep the soup hot without boiling. Pressing the cooked vegetables and crumb through a fine sieve breaks them down into a smooth texture. Keeping the soup below a boil avoids scorching and prevents it from thickening further or separating.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, carrot. 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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