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Celery Soup Puree, Spanish Style

A creamy Spanish-style celery soup made with celery, broth, cream, and egg yolks, finished with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Soup Puree, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean and wash the celery, trimming off all green parts. Cut the tender parts into 1-inch pieces and mix with the sliced celery roots.

  2. Parboil the celery and roots for 5 minutes, then immerse in cold water, drain, and dry.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the celery mixture. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Cover and simmer until moisture is reduced.

  3. Add the white broth and the faggot of parsley, garnished with leeks and green onions. Boil until the celery is well cooked.

  4. Add the thickened veal or chicken broth and boil slowly for 20 minutes.

  5. Remove the faggot and strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  6. Return the soup to the saucepan to keep warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the cream, diluted with the egg yolks, and the butter until melted. Stir in chopped parsley.

  2. Serve with small fried bread crumbs on top.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the main body of the soup and gives its characteristic flavor.
Celery roots
Add a dense, earthy body and deepen the celery flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when the celery is first cooked in it.
Cream
Adds smoothness and richness to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and enrich the soup's texture when gently heated.
Thickened veal or chicken broth
Provides the savory liquid base that the soup is built on.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the soup is boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Dilute them with cream and add them off the heat or at low heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, parsley, leek):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, parsley, leek. 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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